

Class y 2 1 
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f 

The 

Ethics of the Surface 

Series 


No. II 


A Homburg Story 


Ethics of the Surface Series 

By the same Author 

I. The Rudeness of the Honourable 
Mr. Leatherhead 

11. A Homburg Story 

111. Cui Bono. 


A Homburg Story 


By 


Gordon Seymour 

y\T( 



1897 , 



Copyrighted , iSqj, by 
MORRIS MANGES 



All Rights Reserved 


) 


To 

L. W. 




> 



A Homburg Story 

i 

Campbell was late in going to the Elisa- 
bethenbrunnen Promenade on a fine Aug- 
ust morning. It was half-past eight o’clock ; 
throngs of people were already leaving the 
promenade, hastening home in pleasant 
anticipation of their coffee and rusks, for 
which their hour and a half’s walk had 
thoroughly prepared them. Some of the 
ladies were carrying large bunches of 
beautiful roses with which an attentive 
friend had presented them ; some stopped 
on their way up at the little tables with 
peasant girls behind them and bought jars 
of golden honey which they carried in 
their hands. Health-giving Aurora had 
kissed their brows with her rosy lips in re- 
ward of their early rising, and had dis- 
pelled from them the furrows which the 


8 


A Homburg Story. 


cares and toils or dissipations of a Lon- 
don, Paris, or Berlin season had drawn in 
them. 

Campbell had been touched by the 
pleasant “ good-morning” and bright smile 
of one of these fair-faced honey-girls, and 
had told her once that he regretted greatly 
that he did not care for honey. “ Oh, that 
makes no difference,” she had said; and 
he got his smile and greeting whenever he 
passed. 

He nodded to his many friends as he 
walked hastily to the Brunnen, bowed 
more formally to the Prince of Gallia, 
who shouted “ lazy straggler” at him, and 
reached the wells, where he asked for his 
glass of “ half-warni ' waters from one of 
the girls who move about busily in the 
circular enclosure of the fountain. He 
was greeted with a cheery shout from a 
tall, lanky, boyish-looking man of about 
thirty, with a keen face and bright eyes 
in which shrewdness and good-nature, se- 
riousness of purpose, and childish frivolity 
were struggling for the upper hand ; while 
all were overborne by the predominant 


A Homburg Story. g 

clamour of over-strung and uncontrollable 
nerves. 

“ Remember you are dining with us this 
evening,” he said, as he shook Campbell’s 
hand. 

“ Where and when is it?” asked Camp- 
bell ; “ I must confess I had almost forgot- 
ten. Verbal invitations and our confused 
meetings bring one into a hopeless state 
of muddle as regards engagements here.” 

“ At the Kurhaus, at seven forty-five. 
Do be punctual, because we are going to 
the dance afterwards. Of course you are 
coming to the dance, aren’t you? My wife 
wants you to dance with her, and there 
will be some pretty girls. I’m sure you 
can dance as well as any of these fools 
here. Fellows with brains can do any- 
thing they want to do. That’s my convic- 
tion. Am I not right? You see . . 

And he was going to rush off into one 
of his wild theories, which, exaggerated as 
they were, always had some remarkable 
and original point. They pulled one up 
sharp and made one think ; at first with a 
spirit of opposition and, when this had 


io A Homburg Story . 

worn off, with a reconciled agreement, af- 
ter one became accustomed to the humor- 
ous side of his tendency to exaggerate. 
Campbell, though he had a keen sense of 
humour, had inherited from his Scotch an- 
cestors a fund of seriousness, which often 
made him feel irritated with the slovenly 
and slipshod thought and expression of 
his American friend, whom he liked much, 
and for whose wife he had a deep regard 
and admiration verging upon affection. 

“ Don’t let’s talk philosophy early in 
the morning on nothing but a glass of 
Elisabethenbrunnen in an empty stom- 
ach,” Campbell interrupted him. “ I want 
to know about the dance. Is it one of the 
reunions ? ” 

“Why, no! Don’t you know? It’s a 
subscription dance got up by that crowd 
of the Herberts and Lane and Hobhouse, 
and that lot of fellows. Oh, I forgot that 
you have only just come. They’re great 
fun, those dances. They’re immense. 
You must come. You just ask one of 
those fellows — or I’ll ask for you.” 

“ Don’t trouble about that. I shall see 


A Homburg Story. 


ii 


one of the promoters in the course of the 
day and get a ticket. I want to dance with 
Mrs Hewson. She’s the best dancer I 
know. I’ve got to that stage of the mature 
dancing man when an indifferent partner 
gives as much pain as a good one gives 
pleasure.” 

Hewson had not been listening to Camp- 
bell’s last remarks and was evidently puz- 
zling over something that he wanted to 
put emphatically. 

“ But there is something that makes me 
so mad,” he suddenly burst out, “ that it 
spoils my pleasure in the dance. You 
know women are all mean and petty and 
that kind of thing. We all know that, and 
there is no use humbugging about it. But 
what I hate to see, is men giving way to 
it. I hate to see men act like women, 
don’t you?” 

“ I can’t exactly agree to all your general 
statements. Had you not better tell me 
the particular case you have in mind?” 

‘‘Well, those women have made a dead 
set against three nice girls who are here. 
They want to keep them out, and they are 


12 


A Homburg Story . 


doing it. And they have got the men to 
play into their hands, so that the three 
girls have had tickets refused them.” 

“ That is indeed the kind of thing I hate, 
either in man or woman, — unless there be 
some justification. Is there anything of 
the kind in the case of these three women? 
Are they fast, or vulgar, or pushing?” 

“ Nothing of the kind, my dear fellow. 
They are charming and well-bred, and, I 
should say, reserved, — so that I can’t see 
how they should have put themselves in a 
position to be snubbed that way. They 
are very pretty and dress very well — no 
doubt that counts strongly against them 
with the women. But the real reason is 
that they are Jewesses; that they are of 
the great race to which our Saviour be- 
longed, and to which we owe the Bible. 
It is all common rot, and makes me tired !” 

Campbell stopped walking and his friend 
had to follow suit. He had become quite 
serious now, and there was an expression 
of contempt and anger in his face as he 
said: 

“I agree with you heartily, my dear 


i3 


A Homburg Story . 

Hewson, I have never agreed with you 
more completely. That is indeed hateful 
as regards the women, and despicable as 
regards the men. I know such things are 
done. But we have, thank Heavens, been 
spared this genus of vulgarity in England 
— though we have many developments of 
the species. I have come to Homburg 
many years and I have never seen it show 
its vile head here. That’s something quite 
new ; and you must pardon me if I suspect 
that it is not an English importation, but 
has been introduced by the American sec- 
tion of our English-speaking community.” 

“Of course you are right,’’ Hewson as- 
sented. “ I know the American crowd that 
introduced it; they are my friends and 
relations ; but they are most of them Eng- 
lishmen who gave way to them. That’s 
what beats me. I know all about the 
women, and don’t bother about that. 
They have got mean ways: but as . . .” 

And here he interrupted himself and 
turned to Campbell with a deprecatory and 
pleading manner. “Now please don’t 
mind the early hour and the Elisabethen- 


14 


A Homburg Story. 


brunnen and talk sense to me. Yon are a 
fellow that thinks, and I can’t talk sense 
to all those fools. I have often been puz- 
zling over a thing, and you can solve it for 
me. Why do good Christian women try 
to hurt each other, to wound in the most 
sensitive spot of pride ; and why do free- 
born American women try that kind of 
‘society’ game on, more than any others?” 

Campbell himself had been walking on, 
looking before him on the ground, his 
brow knit, manifestly thinking keenly on 
something that must have stirred deeper 
thoughts and associations in him. He 
raised his head, and said to Hewson with 
a changed, deliberate manner : 

“You ask me two questions, Hewson, 
which interest me much, and on which I 
have thought a good deal. One is of a 
universal nature, the other of a special 
national aspect, on which, surely, you are 
a better authority than I am.” 

" No, I’m not. I’ve not lived in America 
since I was a boy who never thought. 
You are a man of experience and observa- 
tion, and you have travelled in America as 


J 5 


A Homburg Story. 

a sympathetic observer, which enables you 
to judge of certain matters better than 
Americans themselves can. Please tell 
me what you think.” 

“ Well.” said Campbell deliberately, “ the 
first general question may help to answer 
the second. As to why people do these 
cruel things, there are several reasons — or 
rather causes ; for they are rarely conscious 
of them, unless they are really bad people. 
In the first place, we all have in us the 
survivals of the instincts of prehistoric 
man, of the man-animal. And, in spite of 
the instinct of love and friendly inter- 
course — the gregarious social instinct — we 
have, as carnivorous, hunting animals, the 
remains of cruelty which you will find in 
all animals, the delight in hurting, in giv- 
ing pain, which in man is perhaps in- 
creased and refined by pleasure in the 
consciousness of power. The child that 
teases an animal or pinches another child 
and then coos with delight is an instance 
of this. The weaker and more timid the 
animal, the more cruel it is. With human 
beings it certainly is so ; perhaps because 


1 6 A Homburg Story. 

the weaker ones have a stronger craving 
for the feeling of power which they rarely 
enjoy, and also, as they are unaccustomed 
to such strong emotional food, they have 
less moderation. That is one reason why 
women are often more cruel than men; 
another being that they are the more 
emotional of the two, and therefore have 
their passions less under the control of 
reason.” 

“ O, that’s immense ! You just say the 
kind of things I’ve been thinking about 
and can’t express. I wish I could express 
things as you can. I feel them all, but I 
can’t put them into words. My education 
was all muffed. 1 " r here you’ve got 
the pull over me.” lie was excited, with 
his clear eyes glaring at Campbell, and he 
suddenly took his arm and dragged him 
forward. “ Go on, go on,” he said. 

“Well, the hunting of the prehistoric 
man, the chief life-interest upon which he 
expended his energy, is, for the modern 
average !Jdy, ‘society’ so-called. It is 
here that she satisfies her natural craving 
for action and self-realisation. I know 


A Homburg Story. 


i7 


this is a barbarous word ; but this outer 
realisation of our self, of our individuality, 
is, in its various forms, one of the leading 
impulses to action and exertion. This 
leads to ambition. And the ambition of 
women who have no profession or pre- 
dominant intellectual or moral interest in 
life, or who do not fulfil that high and 
noble function of being model wives, 
mothers of children whom they educate, 
and mistresses of a household over which 
they preside — the ambition of such women 
lies within ‘society’ in the restricted sense 
of that term. It is here they wish to 
shine, to rise to a high position. 

“Now, this ‘socie^-' .-^s its origin in 

. . •/■ ’ 11 . _ 

positive causes rCt . are good, or it 
springs from negative impulses which are 
bad. The positive basis I should call 
natural social selection or differentiation, 
the negative element is exclusion or ex- 
clusiveness. The positive which leads to 
selection is grounded on a refined taste, 
and calls for the exertion of str; igth and 
independence of character and "truthful 
consistency of conduct. It thus tends to 
2 


1 8 A Homburg Story. 

ennoble the individual and to elevate so- 
ciety (in the wider sense) — it is based upon 
love and liberty. The negative side, 
which makes for exclusion and exclusive- 
ness, leads to the consciousness of one’s 
own security and social advantages, to 
pride and exultation, to envy or the malig- 
nant realisation of the disadvantages of 
others, — it is based upon hate and servility. 
The one looks within fcr its justification, 
the other looks without.” 

Campbell paused a moment, but Hew- 
son had grown quite excited. With the 
keen appreciation he had for thought, and 
his demonstrative, nervous nature, he al- 
most hopped about as he said eagerly, 
“ Go on, go on, I am following you. Don’t 
lose it. I see what you are driving at. 
Oh, it is immense !” 

“Well, then,” Campbell continued, 
“ birds of a feather flock together. People 
of similar tastes, similar interests and oc- 
cupations, and in similar conditions of 
life, will find pleasure and social peace 
and security in each other’s company, and 
will form a circle or set. And it is right 


A Homburg Story. 19 

that they should do it. The more highly 
developed society grows, the better it 
becomes, the more will it thus differen- 
tiate into sets. This is wholly right. 
It will thus have, viewed from with- 
out, an ‘exclusive’ aspect. And it is 
right that it should thus act exclusively 
— so long as the forces which give it 
that consistent, firm, inner solidarity are 
truly the positive reasons which led 
to its inner organization, which made 
it a set. 

“ I even hold that it it is the duty of 
every man to carry through his selection on 
social grounds with firmness and unflinch- 
ing purity of social motive, — provided 
always he maintains the proportion of hie 
in its wholeness, and does not consider the 
‘social’ objects tp the exclusion or sup- 
pression of other duties more urgent and 
persistent in their claims tp consideration. 
But he is not to admit people into the 
inner circle of his friends excepting on 
purely social grounds. Even moral and 
intellectual claims, as well as those of self- 
interest, in so far as they clash with social 


20 


A Homburg Story. 


fitness, are not to be regarded. Society 
as a whole, as a perfect expression of all 
phases of 'life, would be the better and 
more highly developed for this, and social 
groups would be found in almost artistic 
purity and harmony, unsullied by sordid 
interest, without the dissonance of vulgar 
ostentation or even moral and charitable 
forces working out of place. We have no 
right to bore and disturb our friends, who 
join together for pure social converse, 
with unfit people chosen to advance our 
immediate interests, or add to the market- 
place reputation or notoriety of our salons , 
or to rid ourselves of the burden of ties 
and duties in other spheres. Nor, to take 
a definite instance, ought we, in provid- 
ing a letter of introduction, only to con- 
sider the comfort and convenience of the 
person presented to the exclusion of the 
thought, whether the recipient of the 
letter will be equally pleased by the new 
acquaintance and obligation we press 
upon him. If we act thus we are sinning 
against the impersonal ideal of a well- 
organised society as well as wronging our 


21 


A Homburg Story. 

friends, who, in the tacit understanding of 
this ‘social contract,’ were not called upon 
to make a sacrifice, but to receive, as well 
as contribute to, the pleasures of freest 
and lightest social intercourse. But I 
must not overshoot the mark. For, as I 
said before, the ‘social’ claims, as well as 
the whole ‘social’ attitude of mind, may 
have to recede and to make way for much 
more weighty and imperious calls of duty 
in other spheres of life ; and the harmony 
and proportion of all these spheres among 
each other will, before all, have to be 
maintained and regulated. There is not 
so much danger of people making grave 
errors in this direction. 

“ But as soon as the exclusiveness itself 
becomes an essential feature of a set’s 
consistency, as soon as it leads to an ag- 
gressively or manifestly negative attitude 
towards those not of the set, and draws 
its moral (or immoral) sustenance from 
this consciousness — it produces snobbish- 
ness and develops the cruelty and vulgar- 
ity of which you gave me an instance this 
morning.” 


22 


A Homburg Story. 


“ Bully !” shouted Hewson. “ How do 
you define snobbishness?” 

“ Well, that will lead us too far. We 
Englishmen know something about it. 
But I will give you a mot of one of my 
friends, which, in the light of what I have 
been saying, you will understand. He 
said, in defining snob and prig as correla- 
tive terms: ‘A snob is one who is mani- 
festly conscious of his social advantages 
or disadvantages; a prig is the same in 
the intellectual and moral sphere.’ But 
now let us ‘return to our muttons,’ — I hate 
not finishing a thing ; and then I want to 
get to my breakfast. 

“Now, ‘societies’ go in large groups, 
and therefore can not trouble about indi- 
viduals and individual traits. They thus 
manifest their exclusiveness by larger 
categories. And in their struggle to find 
some people upon whose shoulders they 
can rise to social prominence, at whose 
cost they can manifest this ‘exclusive- 
ness,’ they point to recognisable groups 
or classes of people. The victims must 
therefore be readily distinguishable. 


A Homburg Story. 


2 3 


Sometimes it will be a profession or occu- 
pation that is thus stigmatised. Formerly 
it was chiefly a question of ‘birth.’ This 
feudal aspect is played out in England, in 
spite of our having a house of peers. The 
most convenient victims will be those 
smaller groups within the nation who are 
distinguishable by some quasi - national 
characteristic ; and the foreign settlements 
or their descendants, as well as the pro- 
vincials settling in the capital, are most 
convenient. Scotch, Irish and German 
communities are easily fixed upon; and 
this will inevitably happen, if their suc- 
cess gives rise to envy. Now the Jews 
are the readiest victims; and so it comes 
about. And now I’m going to my break- 
fast.” 

They had got to the upper end of the 
promenade, where there are booths of 
jewellers and booksellers. 

“No; now, just come down once more. 
It is very bad to eat your breakfast so 
soon after the waters. Come up and down 
once more and I’ll walk home with you,” 
Hewson urged and put his arm into Camp- 


24 


A Homburg Story. 

bell’s, pulling him along. “You have 
answered the first question; how about 
the second? Why should our American 
women be worse in this respect than your 
English?” 

“ Well, my dear sir, you must forgive 
me if I speak frankly and freely. I know 
you are above that petty vanity which is 
unable to bear even sympathetic and well- 
founded criticism of national peculiari- 
ties.” 

“ Fire away! Of course I don’t mind it 
from you; because you also know and 
acknowledge our good points. It’s the 
fools who know nothing and then criticise 
that make me mad,” Hewson assured 
him. 

“ Well, you Americans have advanced 
with astounding rapidity in all spheres of 
civilisation, and you have outstripped the 
old world in many important ones, so that 
by reaction you are influencing Europe, 
very often for good. But ‘socially* you 
are still in an embryonic stage. With the 
exception of Boston, where the past few 
generations created a nucleus of such gen- 


A Homburg Story. 25 

uine social groups, organically developed 
out of similarity of tastes, education and 
outer conditions of life conducive to pleas- 
ant intercourse, you have no centre. Even 
in Boston there is now active a process of 
disintegration, owing to the sweep of bus- 
iness enterprise and the consequent shift- 
ing of wealth together with a general rest- 
lessness of spirit. In your other great 
centres and in your smaller communities 
fixed and mature social groups have not 
had time to solidify, and no genuine 
grounds of social selection’ — I mean those 
that are not adventitious — have shown 
themselves and been recognised or dis- 
covered. The result is that you are con- 
stantly putting up new ones that may be 
swept away next day. Wealth is one last- 
ing element. But you, especially the best 
among you, all deny that this is the case. 
You have many of you borrowed from 
feudalism — the revolt against the spirit of 
which was the very soul of your origin as 
a people — a mock and phantom reflexion 
of its social criterion, namely birth. We 
have practically given this up in Eng- 


2 6 


A Homburg Story 


land, and you do not really believe in it. 
But I have been hugely amused, while re- 
siding both in your capitals and in out of 
the way provincial towns, to be treated to 
a cross-fire of my hosts at dinner on the 
peculiarities of their grandfathers and 
granduncles, Joe Evans of Evanstown and 
Governor Smith of New London, as if 
they were great historical figures. Now, 
I can understand a certain enthusiasm and 
poetic pleasure felt by a man who, in a 
great English country house, full of archi- 
tectural and historical interest, shews you 
about the halls and galleries and points to 
the Holbeins, Van Dykes, Gainsboroughs 
and Reynolds portraits of his ancestors, 
who are mentioned, not only in the 
Domesday Book, but also in Shakespeare. 
But I can only sympathise with this in so 
far as it gives him a kind of poetic pleas- 
ure. For the rest it will depend upon 
him whether he is a true gentleman, a 
man of refinement and a good fellow, or a 
cad, a bounder or a stable boy. But, you 
see, when the humour no longer struck 
me, I felt it as a grotesque impertinence 


A Homburg Story . 


27 


on the part of some of your country people 
to entertain me with allusions to such un- 
interesting and undistinguished people.” 

“ Well,” rejoined Hewson, “ those people 
are ignorant and do not know the world — 
they are provincial, my dear fellow. You 
have got enough provincials in the coun- 
try in England, have you not? Exactly. 
But it really seems more ridiculous in 
America, and there the people who do 
that kind of thing are not the ‘provincials,’ 
but often socially the most prominent. 
Now you know my own family. We are 
proud of being the pure-blooded Knicker- 
bockers. Well, our wealth comes from 
the fact that one of our Dutch ancestors — 
a regular old ruffian he probably was — 
had some vegetable garden on Manhattan 
Island, which afterwards became the cen- 
tre of the city of New York. And the old 
fellow grew and sold his own potatoes and 
cabbages. My mother’s family, one of 
the richest and most prominent, had, as 
their first American ancestor, a man who 
— I only heard this the other day — worked 
for a dollar a day in the humble employ 


28 


A Homburg Story. 


of an eminent Jewish merchant in New 
York at the end of the last century.” 

“ There you’ve come nearer our main 
point,” Campbell said more eagerly. 
“ This feeling about the Jews .is generally 
based upon ignorance of history and the 
history of the non-biblical Jews. They 
have for many centuries had among them 
men and families of wealth, distinction, 
education and refinement, when the ances- 
tors of many Saxons and Normans, and 
especially of Knickerbockers and Puritans, 
were following humble (though honoura- 
ble) pursuits in life which debarred them 
from the advantages of culture. But the 
feeling that occasionally crops up against 
them is intensified by the introduction of 
religious prejudice and intolerance, espe- 
cially in America.” 

“ Do you think so?” Hewson asked doubt- 
ingly. “ I don’t think it has anything to 
do with religion in the case of this woman- 
meanness.” 

“ Yes, it has, to a slight degree,” Camp- 
bell continued, “ because your social life 
is curiously mixed up with religion. In 


29 


A Homburg Story. 

your towns, and especially in the country, 
your society, not having the legitimate 
and solid bases to which 1 referred, is often 
entirely grouped round the Church. You 
have no Established Church as we have 
in England ; and therefore religion (which 
is taken for granted with us) is there made 
a matter of assertion; it becomes obtru- 
sive. I was often astonished, while trav- 
elling in America, to be asked by a young 
lady, “ What church do you belong to?” as 
we ask a man, “ What’s your, club?” 

“ Oh, that’s so, that’s true,” said Hew- 
son laughing, and evidently enjoying the 
reminiscence. 

“Well, the churches thus become the 
social centres for the communities, and 
they sever the inhabitants, spreading their 
worldly ramification far beyond social life, 
even into business. It is one of the ad- 
vantages of our Established Church that 
it has freed us from a curse which makes 
the Church worldly, while it makes soci- 
ety insincere and fortuitous. It works 
clumsily and is degrading in any case. 
That has had something to do with a stu- 


30 


A Homburg Story. 


pid wave of snobbishness which has occa- 
sionally washed your free and enlightened 
shores. At all events, I am determined to 
put my foot down about it, and not to al- 
low it to dilute and pollute the pleasant 
flow of our Anglo-American life as it has 
run on for some years here. And now I 
rush up to my breakfast. Good-bye.” 

“ Good-bye — thank you ! You are a good 
fellow. One of the right sort. I wish — ” 
Campbell did not hear what else his warm- 
hearted American friend shouted after 
him, as he entered his apartments for a 
well-earned breakfast. 


II 


The agitation in which Hewson’s unimpor- 
tant remark had put Campbell did not 
subside while he was having his breakfast, 
nor for some time thereafter. There was 
nothing in this world he loathed more than 
meanness and pettiness; and social snob- 
bishness of this kind filled him with anger 
and indignation out of all proportion to the 
triviality of the act. Large natures are 
often stirred to irritation and anger by 
smallness, because of its contradiction to 
their essential character. A lion prepar- 
ing for a fatal contest with another lion 
will lash his tail and roar with the exultant 
passion of the fray ; but he will howl with 
the rage of impotence at the stings of 
wasps and carrion-flies. 

Moreover, as a politician, interested in 
foreign affairs, he had studied and fol- 
lowed the Anti-Semitic movements, these 


32 A Homburg Story. 

abortions of internal Chauvinism, of Anti- 
Capitalist parties too cowardly to show 
their true face, and of religious fanaticism 
squirting its attenuated venom at the 
weakest part of the national organism — a 
fight which is not fair, open and evenly 
matched. He felt thankfully how impos- 
sible it was for such a movement to gain a 
permanent foothold in England, because 
of the spirit of fair play, deeply imbedded 
in the heart of the English people, the di- 
rect inheritance of chivalry which is con- 
stantly nurtured* in all layers of British 
society by the manly tone due to athletics 
and sport. And the insinuation of this 
moral, cowardly disease, which turns its 
malignity against the weakest group of a 
community, into even a casual stray por- 
tion of a temporary English colony like 
that of Homburg, called forth his pugna- 
cious spirit of opposition. For, in study- 
ing the whole of this curious movement 
in modern times, he had traced its origin 
and its main source to Germany, whence 
it had been imported into America, Aus- 
tria and even into France ; and he knew 


A Homburg Story. 


33 


how readily such diseases are transmitted 
and how contagious they might be in their 
action — even upon socially healthy bod- 
ies such as the people of England. For 
there the general seeds of snobbishness 
were constantly sending forth shoots of 
wild growth in other spheres ; while dis- 
tress and keen industrial competition were 
preparing whole classes of Englishmen for 
the rivalry and envy which lend them- 
selves to general intolerance and social 
persecution. 

Finally, he remembered the story which 
Maxwell had told him of the engineer Gor- 
don and Gordon’s theory of social respon- 
sibility ; and his perturbation gave way to 
decision when he had determined to fight 
these evil little impish powers with pretty, 
soft, smiling faces and Paris dresses in an 
open and manly way. At all events he 
felt that he would lose in his own self- 
respect, if he tacitly acquiesced, or took 
part, in what was so repulsive to his whole 
nature. 

With this determination, after writing 
a few letters, he sallied forth on a morn- 
3 


34 A Homburg Story. 

ing’s walk tip the Hardwald, and at half- 
past twelve turned his steps towards 
Parker’s hotel, where he had been invited 
to a luncheon party by Lady Northmeath, 
a kind-hearted friend of his, best of host- 
esses, who had the art of collecting inter- 
esting people and always bringing the right 
ones together. 

Campbell had avoided lunching at Par- 
ker’s, though the cooking was excellent; 
because, being a personal friend of the 
Prince of Gallia, who resided there, and 
generally lunched on the terrace, he never 
wished to put himself in the way of His 
Royal Highness, and because he particu- 
larly disliked the idea of seeing people 
scramble for tables in the same place 
where the royal visitor had his luncheon. 

He found the table of his hostess almost 
adjoining that of the Prince, and most of 
her guests had already assembled. They 
were all English, with the exception of 
one very pretty and refined American lady 
and a Swedish diplomat and his wife. 
Her party also included a younger mem- 
ber of the royal family. The Prince at 


35 


A Homburg Story. 

the adjoining table nodded in a friendly 
manner to Campbell ; while his own party 
were effusive in their greetings. He was 
evidently a favourite with all. Lane, one 
of the promoters of the dance, was also of 
the party. 

The conversation flowed agreeably in 
small groups, but occasionally it became 
general, when, by a curious wave of intel- 
ligent instinct, everybody stopped to lis- 
ten to what was well put and worth hear- 
ing. 

Campbell was waiting for the mention 
of the dance; but the subject was not 
broached. So he felt that he must lead 
up to it. 

“ I suppose,” he asked his hostess, “ you 
have been very gay these last few weeks?” 

“Oh, very gay,” she replied. “It has 
been one of the pleasantest seasons I have 
had here. There are a great many nice 
people and very few objectionable ones; 
no gossip, no tripotages , and a universal 
tone of good-fellowship and good-na- 
ture.” 

“ I am glad to hear that. I hope it has 


36 A Homburg Story. 

not all been exhausted, now that I’ve 
come.” 

“ Oh dear, no,” said Lady Northmeath, 
“ on the contrary it seems growing. And 
you bring a new fund of pleasantness with 
you in your own person. Everybody was 
asking why you were not here, and fear- 
ing you might miss this season. But I 
knew you were going to play in the lawn- 
tennis tournament. It will be very good 
this year; the English and American 
champions are coming.” 

“I’m not going to compete seriously. 
My day has gone by. And then the golf 
they have here now will draw me away 
from the tennis. I don’t think that a man 
is much good at very active games after he 
has reached thirty.” 

The hostess demurred to this statement 
and appealed to other members of the 
party, and the conversation became gen- 
eral on the question whether a man could 
retain his agility at games after thirty. 
Grace, the cricketer, and the Cumberland 
wrestlers were cited as showing that mid- 
dle-age was not fatal to excellence in 


A Homburg Story . 


37 


games. It was maintained by some that 
it was merely because men, as a rule, be- 
came engrossed in other occupations and 
duties which debarred them from the 
needed amount of practice, that there were 
fewer prominent athletes of maturer age. 

The discussion was an interesting one, 
but Campbell felt that the luncheon was 
drawing to a close, and he had not suc- 
ceeded in bringing the dance on to the 
tapis. He began nervously to fear that 
the tablecloth would be removed, and his 
topic would be laid “ on the table.” 

He tried a more direct tack, and asked, 
not about the day amusements, but about 
the evenings. By a curious perversity 
only the past evenings were mentioned 
and he could not direct the talk into the 
desired channels. 

The waiters were already asking each 
guest whether he would take coffee and 
liqueurs, which most refused, as they 
were taking the waters, when Lane sud- 
denly said: “ Of course you’ll come to our 
subscription dance at the Kursaal this eve- 
ning, Campbell; I’ve got a ticket for you.” 


38 


A Homburg Story. 


It was Campbell’s only chance. But at 
first his expectancy and the disappoint- 
ment at not bringing the topic up sooner 
confused his whole clear and telling plan 
of mentioning the subject in an impres- 
sively cool and delicate manner. So he 
blushed slightly and hesitated as he said : 

“ I really am afraid I cannot go. I’ve 
determined . . Here he hesitated 
again. 

“All right, old fellow,” said Lane, “we 
won’t press you to tell us what engage- 
ment is preventing you, we won’t ask her 
name.” 

This made Campbell feel like a fool and 
quite angry at the turn Lane’s talk had 
taken. But, above all, he was angry with 
himself for being so little master of him- 
self and of the diplomatic art of arranging 
statements in telling sequence. 

But his annoyance was really most ser- 
viceable to his cause, as the chaff which 
was beginning to be directed at him, and 
his irritation which he could not hide, 
were arresting the attention of the party. 
And as he felt unable to divert the current 


A Homburg Story. 39 

of light banter, he at last burst forth in an 
altered tone, while the whole party were 
listening : 

“ Look here, Lane, be serious. I mean 
what I say when I absolutely refuse to 
have anything to do with your dance, and 
I don’t care who knows my reasons. You 
may think me a prig; but I have what at 
the University we called ‘conscientious 
scruples, ’ and I have nothing to say to an 
entertainment threatening to mar the 
pleasant spirit of our life here, which you 
say has prevailed this year also. I was 
told this morning that there was a dead set 
made against three nice ladies, and that 
tickets were refused them for this dance, 
— the reason being simply that they were 
Jewesses. Now I have no right to dictate 
to anybody whom he is to ask or not ; nor 
do I think that my presence or absence 
will make any difference to anybody ; but 
if this is true, I shall certainly have noth- 
ing to do with the dance and shan’t go.” 

“ I really know nothing about this, 
Campbell, it is quite new to me,” Lane 
said seriously. “ There are several of us 


40 


A Homburg Story. 


stewards, some of whom I don’t know; 
and the tickets are given in a casual man- 
ner. But I shall enquire into this. I also 
hate that kind of snobbery.” 

As the party broke up and Campbell left 
them, he felt some compunction. For a 
serious, if not a painful, tone prevailed 
and had dissipated the high spirits with 
which they sat down to luncheon. Still he 
felt it was worth the sacrifice. 


Ill 


It was a very jovial party dining on 
the Terrace of the Kursaal that evening. 
There were the Hewsons, and four other 
Americans, namely, the military Attache 
of the Paris Embassy with his wife and 
daughter, and a pretty widow, who, like 
all pretty American widows, was supposed 
to have millions, but was a well-bred and 
cheery person with frank and simple man- 
ners. Besides these and Campbell, there 
was Lord Hampton, a school and college 
friend of Campbell’s, and Easton the trav- 
eller, an admirable raconteur, most imper- 
turbable in his good humour and high 
spirits, the soul of every jolly party. 

The pleasant lightness of the conversa- 
tion at their table was, as it were, set in 
the universal good-humour, which seemed 
to reign at all the tables with similar din- 
ner-parties about them, beginning with 


4 * 


A Homburg Story. 


that of the Prince of Gallia at one end. 
The clatter of knives and forks and glasses, 
with a running accompaniment of low or 
harsh chatter which makes the in-door 
table-d’hotes grate on one’s nerves, were 
here not noticeable; the accompaniment 
being, in this case, the music of the excel- 
lent band which was playing in the Kiosque 
below. 

Hundreds of well-dressed people were 
walking to and fro on the lower terrace and 
about the music stand; while the real 
lovers of music were seated on the chairs 
placed before the orchestra. 

Shortly after nine, when the dinner was 
over, the party rose and began to join the 
promenaders, walking up and down before 
the music. 

“ You are coming to dance with me later 
on?” Mrs Hewson, the finest dancer, the 
most graceful and best-dressed woman of 
Homburg, asked Campbell, who was walk- 
ing with her and her husband. 

“ I am afraid ...” Campbell was just 
saying when Hewson cut in hurriedly 
with— 


43 


A Homburg Story . 

“ Oh, I forgot to tell you. It is all right 
about that affair I told you of this morn- 
ing ; the cards were sent to them before 
dinner.” 

“ Hang it all,” Campbell said impatient- 
ly, “ why did you not tell me that before? 
Now I haven’t got a ticket, and I want so 
much to dance with Mrs Hewson. I feel 
just in the mood for a good dance.” 

He really felt exultant. Perhaps it was 
the pretty woman at his side, and the 
pleasant dinner, and the music, and the 
atmosphere of the whole place. But, no 
doubt, there was some exultation at what 
he thought must probably be his victory. 

“ You can get a ticket at once from one 
of those people. You know them all. I 
have seen one or two of them on the ter- 
race just now.” 

“ All right,” Campbell said impatiently 
as he left them, “ I’ll see.” 

He walked up and down searching for 
one of his friends who could get him a 
ticket, when the old Duke of Oxford passed 
with a lady and several men, and responded 
to his bow by shouting— 


44 


A Homburg Story . 


“And how is the great radical states- 
man?” They shook hands and the Duke 
asked him what lady he was looking for so 
intently. Campbell told him that he was 
looking for some one to get him a ticket for 
the dance. 

“ Oh, stay with us,” said the Duke, “ we 
are all going, and you can come in with us. 
We shall only walk here for a little while 
longer, and then we join the dancers.” 

So it was that Campbell entered the 
ballroom on the upper floor of the Kur- 
haus, — the splendid edifice which, like the 
sister buildings at Baden-Baden and Wies- 
baden, could only be erected out of the 
proceeds of years of gambling, — in the 
company of the Duke of Oxford. 

They were given seats together near the 
entrance. The dancing had already begun, 
and Campbell sat with the royal party 
watching the dancers. Presently he 
thought that he might now leave the dis- 
tinguished group and dance himself. He 
was just about to ask Mrs Hewson for a 
dance, when he perceived a certain move- 
ment among a group of American ladies 


A Homburg Story. 45 

he was just passing, and heard them say : 
“ There they are.” 

Following the direction in which they 
were looking, he saw three ladies who had 
just entered the ball-room, and were 
standing together, somewhat'isolated from 
the crowd near the door. One of them 
seemed older, and was probably a married 
woman ; the two others were evidently un- 
married younger sisters. They were tall 
and rather uninteresting in their looks. 
All three had dark hair and rather long 
aquiline noses. He was wondering, as he 
examined them carefully, whether, if he 
had known nothing before, he would have 
classified them as Semitic, English-Nor- 
man in race, French, Italian, or Spanish. 
He realised, as he had so often done, how 
puerile it was to attempt seriously to es- 
tablish ethnological distinctions within the 
confused mixture of races to be found in 
all European peoples. 

They were dressed simply and without 
much chic . But he was irritated by the 
fact that they should each of them have 
worn such splendid and costly jewels, some 


46 


A Homburg Story. 


of them bearing distinctly the character of 
old heirlooms, — which, no doubt, they had 
bought. 

He felt suffused by a glow of anger that 
they should have come at all, after the 
tardy invitation had almost been extracted 
by force. And a certain dignity and 
marked assurance in their demeanour as 
they stood there in their isolated position, 
with so many people staring at them, as if 
they were accustomed or hardened to that 
kind of thing, angered him all the more. 
Under other circumstances he would have 
admired the pluck and character in their 
demeanour. 

Still, after the first burst of protest and 
irritation, he returned to his first mood 
of stolid purpose : — the more they were 
shunned, the more was it incumbent upon 
him to help them. And so, as at that mo- 
ment he saw his friend Lord Hampton 
bowing formally to them, without however 
advancing, he hastily walked up to him 
and said — 

“ Hampton, I want you to do me a 
favour.” 


47 


A Homburg Story. 

“ With all my heart, my dear boy,” said 
Lord Hampton cheerfully, “if it is any- 
thing within my power.” 

“ I want you to introduce me to those 
three ladies you have just been bowing to, 
and at once.” Campbell spoke eagerly, 
and was already seizing his friend by the 
arm to drag him on. 

“ But, my dear fellow, I hardly know 
them and . . .” Lord Hampton seemed 
embarrassed, almost displeased. He 
looked at his friend with a puzzled ex- 
pression. The doubt which flashed 
through his mind was so thoroughly out 
of keeping with what years of friendship, 
from childhood upwards, had taught him 
of Campbell’s character, that he at once 
dispelled it. 

Campbell had interrupted him and had 
said rapidly with growing eagerness: “I 
have never asked you for a favour, Hamp- 
ton, and this is so small a matter ; but, fy 

tiens." 

So Lord Hampton shrugged his shoulder 
and advanced to the three ladies, Camp- 
bell following him, again bowed formally, 


48 A Homburg Story. 

whispering a few words to them, and by 
the time Campbell had drawn up, he men- 
tioned his name to them in a perfunctory 
manner, which displayed no pleasure or 
cordiality, and the presentation was over. 
Lord Hampton at once withdrew, and 
Campbell, having asked the youngest of 
the three for a dance, which she accorded, 
he also walked off with his partner. 

Campbell was not in the best mood or 
temper. He was irritated with the man- 
ner in which his friend had met his re- 
quest, with his friend himself, and with 
himself for having asked it. But he rap- 
idly withdrew it from himself and cast it 
in his heart at the young lady, whom he 
made responsible for the ordeal he was 
undergoing. Perhaps there was still lurk- 
ing through the irritation a certain prig- 
gish self-satisfaction in the increased 
amount of difficulties and impediments, of 
personal sacrifice, which his unselfish act- 
ing up to principle brought with it — so 
that it was rapidly approaching the heights 
of heroic action. 

His unfavourable impression of her was 


49 


A Homburg Story. 

not diminished by her manner towards 
him. It was not merely simple and direct, 
but marked a self-possession and cool- 
ness, which, under the circumstances, ap- 
proached effrontery. She looked him 
straight in the eyes in a scrutinising man- 
ner and cross-questioned him. She paid 
no heed to his questions, which he had 
carefully, with rare tact, arranged so as in 
no way to wound her, and the simple, 
almost humble tone (quite foreign to him 
with people of any kind) which he had 
considerately forced himself to adopt, was, 
as it were, taken for granted, and led, he 
indignantly felt convinced, to a complete 
misconception of his whole personality. 
He was rapidly beginning to feel like a 
fool, and did not like her the more for feel- 
ing thus. 

Meanwhile she plied him with questions, 
which, as soon as answered by him, were, 
with a nod of acceptance, dropped to 
make room for new ones. What disgusted 
him most was the low, vulgar niveau of 
these questions. They were all personal 
inquiries concerning the people they saw 
4 


50 A Homburg Story. 

there. She would put up her long eye- 
glasses and stare at this lady and that man 
and inquire who they were, where they 
came from, pass them over with a general 
remark, that they were good-looking or 
not, well-dressed or not. And then she 
would cap the climax by such brutal ques- 
tions as “ She is very rich, is she not?” or 
“ They are great people in their country, 
are they?” “ This is almost the caricature 
of Hebrew characteristics,” Campbell said 
to himself. 

All she said, moreover, was couched in 
miserable English, with a strong German 
accent; words not only mispronounced, 
but misplaced and tortured out of all form 
and proportion of meaning ; slang expres- 
sions made coarse by their juxtaposition 
to a word only used in classical literature. 
Campbell, who had a sensitive ear and a 
most delicate appreciation of the niceties 
and elegances of the English language, 
suffered acute pain as he heard it tor- 
tured with cruel insensibility. 

But the climax of his suffering, which 
had already produced an intense state of 


A Homburg Story. 51 

irritation, was reached when he began to 
dance. 

Here too was the same impertinent wil- 
fulness which marked her whole perso- 
nality. She had assured him that she could 
dance the trois-temjbs , the Boston as she 
called it ; but the rhythm of her waltz was 
still the deux-temps. In fact there was no 
rhythm at all, and no time. She could 
not have had an ear for music. 

Campbell had made a paraphrase of the 
French saying : Dans l ’ amour il y a toujour s 
un qui ai?ne et V autre qui se laisse aimer , 
maintaining that it was all right in such 
cases if it was the better and stronger who 
was the active one ; and he especially ap- 
plied this to a couple dancing. 

With her incompetence she physically 
insisted upon leading him, who was 
known to be, and was, an excellent dancer. 
The result was that they were bobbing 
about out of time, bumping against every 
other partner, until Campbell, red in the 
face with real anger and not with the ex- 
ertion, caught her firmly round the waist 
and pressed her wrist so tightly with his 


52 


A Homburg Story. 


other hand that it must have pained her, 
and, with a suppressed snort or grunt, 
whirled her round after his own fashion, 
forcing her into his own steps and to his 
guidance by sheer muscular compulsion. 

When he had triumphantly wheeled her 
into his step, and she just had whispered, 
“ What a good dancer you are,” he reached 
the place where her sisters were stand- 
ing, and, without further ceremony, he 
deposited her there, bowed, and walked 
away, red in the face and boiling with 
rage. 

This frame of mind could not even be 
dispelled by a dance with Mrs. Hewson, 
who was a perfect dancer and with whom 
he loved to dance. As if there had been 
a contamination through his previous bad 
dancing company, Mrs. Hewson remarked 
the change and said : “ Why, you are 
dancing badly to-night. I don’t recognise 
you. You are rough, heavy and coarse in 
your movements. I really do not recog- 
nise you.” 

“ Oh, I am out of sorts, and dancing is, 
like the practice of every art, expressive 


A Homburg Story. 


53 


of personality and even moods. Forgive 
me for this evening. We’ll have a good 
one some other day.” 

And with this he left her and the ball- 
room, and sulkily went home to bed. 


IV 


On the afternoon of the next day, 
Campbell was bicycling steadily up-hill 
on his way to the Saalburg. It was a very 
stiff pull, a continuous ascent; but the 
prospect of a delightful coast the whole 
way back made him forget the strain. He 
had got to the end of the wide road planted 
with trees which merges into a narrow 
avenue cut through the woods, and half- 
way through this, when he saw a young 
lady immediately in front of him dismount 
her bicycle in haste and begin a careful 
examination of the hind wheel. As he 
drew up he noticed a gesture of impotent 
despair, and he could clearly see the ex- 
pression of distress on a face that at once 
arrested his attention. For the time, how- 
ever, the anxiety expressed in her counte- 
nance directed his eyes from her face 
wholly towards the cause of her distress. 


A Homburg Story . 55 

He dismounted, raised his cap, and said : 
“ I fear you have had an accident. Can I 
be of any service to you?” 

“ Thank you, I really do not wish to 
trouble and detain you. I fear I have 
punctured my tyre. There will probably 
be some cab passing which will take me 
home.” 

“ I doubt whether you will meet any dis- 
engaged cab here or for some distance on. 
You must allow me to help you. I know 
how to deal with bicycles, and if it is only 
a punctured tyre I can repair that. I have 
the materials in my case.” 

“ Oh, it would be very kind of you,” she 
said in a more joyful tone, the anxiety 
having entirely vanished from her voice 
and face. “ But I really do not wish to 
delay you and spoil your ride.” 

But he had already kneeled down, and 
began in a workmanlike way to examine 
the machine. He was so full of the task 
before him that he almost forgot the young 
lady, and only thought of her as an assis- 
tant worker, giving her orders to hold the 
machine this way or that, while he tested 


56 A Homburg Story. 

it. He began to pump the back tyre 
which had been depleted. 

“ Yes/’ he said, “ there is a simple punc- 
ture here, not very bad. I can make it 
hold fairly well, and pump once or twice 
until you get back to Homburg. Where 
were you bound for?” 

“ I was going up to the Saalburg,” she 
said. “ My people drove on with their 
bicycles in the trap, to have tea there and 
then to coast back. But I was so proud 
that, in spite of their warnings as to the 
stiffness of the pull, I determined to cycle 
all the way up. It appeared to me a 
feeble thing to have yourself driven the 
whole way and then to ride back. You 
would probably call it unsportsmanlike,” 
she added. 

“ I have the same feeling,” he said, 
smiling; and now again he forgot the 
bicycle and the punctured tyre and looked 
straight into the lovely face before him, 
which exercised a fascination, disturbing 
and calming at once, such as he had never 
experienced before. Perhaps it was the 
up-hill exertion or his bending down over 


A Homburg Story . 57 

the wheel, but there was a flutter in the 
region of his heart. 

“ Yes, I have the same feeling. In my 
Alpine climbing days I would not drive 
the moment 1 had set foot in Switzerland, 
and used to sneer at the people who drove 
up to the foot of the mountain and then 
began their climb. But I’ll tell you the 
best thing to do with the bicycle. I am 
bound for the Saalburg too. The tyre 
will hold until we get to the end of this 
avenue, and then begins a steep ascent to 
the right, where even I, who have ‘sports- 
manlike’ feelings, intended to dismount 
and to push the machine up-hill. Then 
I’ll help you up the hill with your machine. 
At the Saalburg there will be time and all 
facilities for repairing the puncture.” 

She gratefully agreed to this on condi- 
tion that he would allow her to push her 
own machine. 

And so they started off. Her bicycle 
held out while she was riding it and for 
some distance while they were pushing 
their machines up-hill through the woods. 
Campbell admired the firm and graceful 


58 


A Homburg Story. 


walk of this slim figure, elastic and strong, 
the way she planted her thin foot firmly 
on the ground, and the erectness of her 
carriage. She wore a black short skirt 
reaching to her ankles, simple in its art, 
the seams showing outside; it had the 
character of a riding habit. A white 
blouse, the sleeves not too slavishly follow- 
ing the fashion in exaggerated width. A 
stiff man’s collar of the blouse and a bright 
red tie, the only touch of colour in her 
costume, gave her a boyish appearance; 
while a black toque, with a somewhat 
defiant straight black feather rising back- 
wards and still upwards, was placed 
slightly to the side, and gave a brisk and 
energetic, though not forward, turn to the 
head. But the predominant character of 
the face was seriousness. 

The road was not as good as it had 
hitherto been, and the ascent was steep. 
Campbell felt the severity of the exertion 
in pushing the machine up. He noticed 
that she was toiling hard, but, bracing 
herself up and smiling, she endeavoured 
to hide her effort. At the same time he 


59 


A Homburg Story . 

noticed that the back tyre had again be- 
come depleted, and that her machine was 
bumping over the road. And when he 
heard the trickling of water in the woods 
on his right hand, whither a path seemed 
to lead, he gladly intervened and said — 

“ This will really not do. You may cut 
the rim of your tyre and spoil the whole 
machine. ‘A stitch in time,’ you know. 
I hear the trickling of a spring close by 
here. I am sure this path leads there.” 

The young lady was evidently glad to 
halt. As she stood leaning on her wheel, 
the courageous, almost defiant expression 
had left her, and her voice had a soft 
tremor as of a child in distress as she said — 
“ If you really think you can repair it, 
and it does not delay you too long, I 
should be most grateful if you would do it.” 

He led the way along the narrow path 
made soft and springy with dry pine- 
needles, and started with surprise and de- 
light as he came upon a little clearing in 
the woods on the hillside, with a pretty 
stream trickling over stones and pebbles 
rapidly down the hill from a spring well- 


6o 


A Homburg Story. 


in g out from the rocks overhung with 
boughs. It must have been known as a 
fountain with good water, for, on a stone 
by the side, stood a bright tin cup, care- 
fully kept clean by the workmen in the 
woods. But what riveted his gaze was the 
vast, clear and brilliantly lighted scene 
before him and at his feet, which stretched 
for miles in the distance, lost at last in the 
deep blue haze of the Taunus hills rising 
beyond the plain. Standing in the dark 
shade of the woods, on the verge of all 
this expanse of light, his eyes were fairly 
dazzled by the brilliant contrast. And 
there, in the middle distance, gladly and 
comfortably settled on its slighter eleva- 
tion, lay Homburg, drinking in the light, 
and shedding back twinkles of sunshine 
from its blinking windows and their roofs, 
with the tower of its old castle no longer 
frowning in its stolid feudal pride of a van- 
ished sovereignty, but smiling in aged 
benignity down upon the gay folly of its 
modern flitting world of fashion. 

For the moment he had forgotten the 
woods and the stream, his fair companion 


A Homburg Story. 6 1 

and the purpose of their quest. And when 
he turned, his eyes could not at once dis- 
cern her. He could only see a shadowed 
outline rising against the dark background 
of foliage, the white mass of the blouse 
and a bright red speck of the tie. But as 
his eyes again became accustomed to the 
softer light of the woods, the sight before 
him, compact and limited in scope, har- 
monised into a real picture which held his 
eye more completely and with a thrill 
more penetrating than the distant and ex- 
tended valley bathed in sunlight. 

By the moss-covered rock, brown grey 
and bluish, with its trickling, silvery 
stream and the overhanging boughs of 
deep and bright green, stood the girl, 
erect, but for a slight forward inclination 
of the head. She might have been a 
Highland queen. But the face, the heav- 
enly face, riveted his attention. The hair 
in thick waves framed the face heavily, 
with its delicate features, so that it ap- 
peared almost too great a weight for them 
to bear. It was dark brown, with a red- 
dish golden sheen. And the eyes, with 


62 


A Homburg Story. 


the arched dark brows, seemed to reflect 
brightly and yet softly the light of the 
view she was gazing upon. The scene be- 
fore her seemed to have come upon her as 
in a trance she gazed fixedly; and then 
the tension of her whole countenance 
seemed to relax and a soft smile stole over 
the face as her lips parted and she whis- 
pered in a deep tone : “ How lovely this 
is!” Still she continued to gaze, but her 
eyes moved about to the various points of 
the landscape. 

Campbell, who feared that she might 
notice his stare, tried to follow the direc- 
tion of her eyes towards the happy scene 
before them ; but they would return to her 
and drink in their fill of the loveliness 
there. Suddenly her eyes turned to him 
and she noticed his stare. A rapid blush 
came over her cheeks; she looked away 
and stepped back. 

Campbell felt that he had spoilt her 
mood, and, by a correct divination, he 
altered his manner and voice and said 
lightly in a business-like tone : 

“ It is very beautiful ; but we must not 


A Homburg Story. 63 

waste our time. We have got a lot of 
work before us.” 

And with that he began to move about, 
pulling her bicycle with him and resting 
it beside the pool, below the fountain. 
Then, taking off his coat and rolling up 
the sleeves of his white flannel shirt, so 
that his strong sinewy arms could work 
freely, he began to take off the tyre. All 
the while, to counteract the impression 
his stare had made, he was talking in a 
quiet workmanlike manner. 

“We have quite a job before us. And 
you must help me. Don’t mind if I bully 
you and order you about. We are fellow- 
workmen now and you are my assistant.” 
And looking up smilingly he added in a 
commanding tone : 

“Come on now! Don’t stand about! 
Hold this while I unscrew the valve.” 

She gave a quick start and smiled. But 
she did not at once enter into his tone 
and manner of brisk earner aderie, and 
said : 

“ Oh, I am so grateful to you and so very 
sorry for all the trouble I am giving you. 


6 4 A Homburg Story. 

I am keeping you from your ride, which I 
have spoilt as it is. ...” 

“Now please first hold this, and then 
listen to me,” he said with a dash of scold- 
ing in his voice. And while she was bend- 
ing down to hold the machine, he said 
seriously : — 

“ I beg you not to mention ‘gratitude’ or 
‘trouble’ any more. In the first place, I 
am assured that you are grateful to chance 
which has brought me to help you, and to 
me for doing her behest. Meanwhile I am 
well pleased with having been able to be 
of some service to a lady, to have hap- 
pened upon this lovely spot I never knew 
of, to have met you, to be here, and so on. 
It is not grateful or graceful not to accept 
a favour simply and to burden the bienfai- 
teur with the weight of painful obligation 
cast from the recipient’s shoulders, and to 
retard the advances of acquaintance or 
friendship. It impedes progress or renders 
friendly action quite impossible.” 

She smiled and looked up at him, while 
she said with serious emphasis, 

“ You are quite right. I have often felt 


A Homburg Story. 65 

that. I shall not mention it again. And 
I am pleased to have met you.” 

“ By the way,” he put in, “in Germany 
people introduce themselves. It is not a 
bad plan. At all events I should like 
you to know me. My name is Campbell. 
I am an Englishman, a member of Parlia- 
ment.” 

“ My name is Lewson. I am an Ameri- 
can,” she answered in the same tone. 

Meanwhile they chatted as they worked 
on. Campbell took care to keep his eyes 
on his work and not to look at her. He 
felt that her simple, bright and cheerful 
talk would be marred if he trusted him- 
self to look up in her eyes. 

He had unscrewed the valve and pass- 
ing the tyre-lifter under the wire he forced 
it round and took out the inner tube. She 
watched all his movements with the great- 
est attention; and he explained what he 
was doing as he proceeded, giving her a 
lesson in repairing punctures. 

There was quite a joyful tone between 
them ; something of the nature of children 
who are busily engaged in some elaborate 
5 


66 A Homburg Story. 

construction, the little sister following the 
brother about as he works on busily. She 
had regained all her naturalness and was 
enjoying it fully, forgetful of the accident 
and of the fact that the man with whom 
she was thus alone in the woods had been 
an utter stranger to her less than an hour 
ago. 

But he had not regained his full self- 
possession ; he was preoccupied while he 
was apparently absorbed in his work, and 
his jaunty air of busy command had to the 
careful observer a ring of insincerity; it 
was forced. Moreover, the same observer 
would have been struck by the fact that, 
while her eyes wandered freely from 
the object he was touching and from his 
hands to his face, he kept his eyes fixed 
upon the work, more than was in reality 
needed, and did not once look into her 
face. 

He kept this up during the process of 
taking out the inner tube and examining 
it to discover the puncture. When even a 
minute examination did not lead to its 
detection, he proceeded to the next ex- 


A Homburg Story . 67 

pedient of putting the inner tube in the 
water. 

They returned to the fountain, which 
they had left to have a better light. He 
did not even look into her face when they 
agreed to have a drink of the clear spring- 
water ; and he gave her a cup, which she 
drained with keen enjoyment, he drinking 
after her. 

But, when holding the tube carefully in 
the water with both hands, and stretching 
it as he passed it on to discover the bubble 
from the hole of the puncture, she crouched 
near him and peered eagerly into the pool, 
he at first gazed at her image reflected in 
the clear water, her black feather nodding 
on the ruffled surface, and then the eyes 
held his own. They were of a bluish- 
green, wonderfully bright, but their bright- 
ness was softened and subdued by the dark 
brows and lashes, and the serious, almost 
sad expression of the whole face. Seen 
thus in the water over which he was bend- 
ing, they filled him with a mysterious thrill 
which was almost uncanny. He could re- 
strain himself no longer, and stopped pass- 


68 


A Homburg Story . 


ing the tube ; the blood was all in his head 
and he felt giddy. 

As he looked up, she also raised her 
head and he looked straight into her eyes, 
the deep and yet limpid beauty of which 
the image in the water had but feebly re- 
flected. 

He could not command his voice, and 
there was some emotion in its ring as he 
quoted in German : — 

“ Halb zog sie ihn , halb sank er hin . . .” 
She at once seized upon his quotation 
from Gothe’s Der Fischer, and the rapid 
blush having made way to a slight expres- 
sion of coquetry, she said : — 

“No! no dangerous nixie; but, as I saw 
my toque and waving feather in the water 
just now, it reminded me of a mild and at- 
tenuated Mephistopheles.” 

He feared the heavier wave of sentiment 
which threatened to gain possession of 
him, and thus irretrievably spoil the 
pleasant tone of his new comradeship; 
and so he said with forced lightness : — 

“ If I am Faust, there would be no need 
of his producing a Gretchen.” 


6 9 


A Homburg Story . 

She evidently did not appreciate the 
taste of this remark, and he at once 
added : — 

“ Now we must push on our work. We 
must find that wicked little puncture.” 

“ Please let me try ; and show me how 
to do it,” she said eagerly, and was the 
little sister again. “ It looks so fascinat- 
ing.” 

And so, having bared her white arms, 
she thrust them into the clear pool under 
the overhanging boughs. He touched her 
hands and felt a warm thrill shooting to 
his heart, though the water was cold. As 
she stretched the tube piece by piece soon 
there was a tiny crystalline air bubble ris- 
ing to the surface. 

“ Stop there,” he cried, and she started 
as he held her hand, “ There is the little 
culprit.” 

He had found the puncture, and soon 
had pasted the strip pf rubber to it. She 
now watched him as he put the tube back 
and held the machine, while he pumped 
the air in again. Then he dried her 
hands and his with his handkerchief, put 


70 A Homburg Story . 

on his coat, and they were ready to 
start. 

“ O, I must have one more look,” she 
said, as they were turning to leave. And 
she stept forward into the bright sunlight 
and gazed over the lovely scene again. 
He stood close beside her and they both 
joined in their rapture over one of nature’s 
lovely scenes. Contemplation of beauty 
in nature or art is a common ground of 
disinterested and elevating pleasure, an 
unfailing source of happiness which will 
always bind the hearts of men together in 
peace and good-will, if not in love. 

And then they returned to the main 
road and resumed their ascent, chatting 
quietly and natural^ as if they were old 
friends. 

The seclusion and uncommonness of the 
spot they had left seemed almost to have 
given an intimacy and depth to their ac- 
quaintanceship, which hours along the 
highroad or in the streets and drawing- 
rooms of a town could not have yielded. 
When they returned to the road it seemed 
as if a chapter in a story had been com- 


7i 


A Homburg Story . 

pleted; as if they had met again after 
some absence, — like people who had 
known each other before. 

And when they reached the top of the 
hill and came in view of Saalburg and of 
two ladies who were evidently awaiting 
them, and were looking anxiously for their 
sister, the young lady could hardly realise 
that Campbell was but a chance acquaint- 
ance met but an hour ago. And as she 
introduced him to her sisters, she felt some 
embarrassment as to how he could account 
for the informal and almost intimate foot- 
ing upon which she felt herself with him. 

She was herself chilled by the reserve 
with which they received him. Though, 
after her hasty account of what had hap- 
pened and what he had done, they thanked 
him for his kindness, their manner struck 
her as forbidding and prudish. She did 
not realise that, as a rule, she was the 
more reserved of the three. 

Campbell liked the other ladies. He at 
once felt that they were women of high 
breeding and refinement. The eldest, 
Mrs. Morton, was married; the other, the 


72 A Homburg Story. 

youngest sister of the three, was called 
Ethel by them. His own friend’s name 
was Margaret. 

But their manner warmed to him under 
the charm of his own fresh cheerfulness, 
which never would brook reserve in the 
people who pleased him, as it at once dis- 
armed affectation or haughtiness, and 
made them ridiculous. This buoyancy of 
spirit and natural grace and good-nature 
of manner no doubt came from his Irish 
mother. Humour is the unfailing antidote 
to pride. 

He proposed that they should order 
their tea to be ready in half-an-hour, and 
that, meanwhile, they should inspect the 
Roman camp of which there was so fine 
a specimen near. He naturally took the 
arrangements in his hands, and they as 
naturally seemed to accept his leadership. 

The last vestiges of reserve seemed to 
vanish from the two sisters, when he began 
to show them over this interesting camp in 
the wood. His accurate knowledge and 
his clear and precise diction gave him 
authority and evoked respect ; and so they 


73 


A Homburg Story. 

all three grouped round him when he 
began to point out and to describe the 
remains, and, with direct and graphic 
touches, to restore to life the past which 
had left such clear footprints on those 
northern hills. 

The questions they asked, on the rare 
occasions when they interrupted his ac- 
count, were pertinent and intelligent, and 
helped him to give a continuous story 
of the ancient Roman settlement. They 
were not of that exasperating order, which 
shows a misplaced curiosity for unessential 
or unimportant things, or are vapid and 
senseless interruptions made to hide a 
want of interest or to display sham knowl- 
edge. 

He pointed out to them the shops of the 
traders before the Porta Decumana, who 
gathered there from all parts of the ancient 
world to profit by the legions in the camp. 
Besides these traders the inhabitants of 
the adjoining country, attracted by the 
protection and security of the spot, swelled 
the number of people outside the fortifica- 
tions ; veterans from the legions and com- 


74 A Homburg Story. 

panies also settled there, and thus the 
canabae grew into villages; nay, towns. 
He pointed in the direction of the great 
city Mayence, not many miles off, which 
had thus grown up out of a Roman camp, 
like Strassburg, Vienna and many other 
famous modem cities. He led them into 
the gate flanked by its towers and walls, 
with the fossa surrounding them ; and from 
a higher point, with the help of sketches 
which he rapidly drew on the back of a 
letter he took from his pocket, he showed 
them the plan of the whole camp: with 
the Praetorium and Quaetorium, the drill- 
grounds, baths, sanctuary and bases of 
statues (even in this lonely camp); the 
Porta Praetoria, the Porta Principalis dex- 
tra and sinistra, and the distant confines 
of the settlement visible through cuttings 
in the woods. Then he pointed to the 
Roman road, stretching on for miles and 
joining the vast system of roads connect- 
ing, for commercial and military purposes, 
the whole of the European continent under 
Roman sway, nearly two thousand years 
ago. 


75 


A Homburg Story. 

And then he grew eloquent, and with 
singular power he recalled to life the past 
of this lonely camp in the north of Ger- 
many. He gave a rapid sketch in broad 
lines of the Roman history and policy of 
those days ; and then, in the person of a 
Roman officer there commanding, he de- 
scribed the orders and duties and tasks of 
each day. Finally, to give real life to his 
picture, he drew an analogy between 
modem Great Britain and ancient Rome 
and between the pioneer work of the set- 
tlers and fighters in South Africa, whose 
camps in the distant woods correspond to 
this Roman camp, and the Roman legions 
of old. “ But Rome,” he ended, “ was su- 
preme, and there were no rivals of equal 
strength to interfere, as the other Euro- 
pean powers oppose our advance. On the 
other hand, there was then no effective 
tribunal of public morality, no spiritual 
conscience of nations, of which we all 
have to take account in modern times — 
thank God, a real power with us, unknown 
to the ancient world, and to which we 
Englishmen, I hope, will always pay due 


76 A Homburg Story . 

tribute, though we shall insist upon ad- 
vancing, unchecked by any power, be- 
cause we know that our advance always 
means the common advances of civilisa- 
tion.” 

He had really spoken these last words 
with a fervour which carried him away ; 
while the ladies were listening to him in 
rapt and breathless attention. He stopped 
suddenly and altered his tone as he said 
softly : — 

“ Why, I have been carried away into a 
political speech at the hustings, and have 
drifted back into my own ‘shop,’ from 
which I apparently cannot free myself. 
But now we had better return to the inn 
and our tea ; for, though it takes an aston- 
ishingly short time to coast back to Hom- 
burg, it is getting late.” 

On their way back to the inn, the elder 
sister told him that she had never sup- 
posed Roman antiquities could be made 
so interesting and poetic. Even though 
she felt how much was due to his eloquence 
and the beauty of this lonely spot, the life 
of the Romans, into which he had led 


A Homburg Story. 


77 


them, and with which he had made them 
sympathise, seemed to her more full of 
poetry than she had realised before. 

“ I must say,” he replied, “ that I am my- 
self astonished that I have put poetry and 
warmth into my account of Roman mili- 
tary life and any Roman antiquities, as 
you assure me I have done. For I will 
confess to you that Rome and Roman an- 
tiquities are most antipathetic to me per- 
sonally. All in ancient Rome that appeals 
to me as admirable and worthy of being 
perpetuated in its influence was merely a 
reflex of the brilliant, and still mellow, 
glow of Hellenic civilisation. Even the 
spirit of enterprise and empire, which they 
carried to such glorious fulfilment, was 
Hellenic, from the mythical days of the 
Argonauts to the splendid rush of Alex- 
ander’s conquest.” 

He found in these ladies response to his 
enthusiasm for Hellenism. Not only had 
they read and studied Greek history and 
literature ; but they had travelled in 
Europe and in Egypt, and were especially 
enthusiastic over Greece itself, its monu- 


78 


A Homburg Story. 


ments and works of art as well as its ex- 
quisite landscapes. 

In fact, there was soon established be- 
tween them that intellectual freemasonry 
and entente cordiale , which comes to people 
who have lived surrounded by the same 
books and works of art with which they 
have familiarised themselves, until Taste, 
which is at the base of even social con- 
duct, becomes for them essentially the 
same in quality and refinement. They 
spoke the same intellectual dialect and did 
not require explanation of terms used or 
references made, which conveyed a whole 
world of preliminary meaning, on the 
ground of which new things mentioned or 
views put forward were readily intel- 
ligible. 

He felt the acquaintanceship growing 
in familiarity, not without gratified sur- 
prise, when he found that they were con- 
versant with English politics and move- 
ments for social reform, which they 
followed with deep interest. To explain 
this Mrs. Morton told him that their grand- 
father had been an Englishman, and they 


79 


A Homburg Story. 

had always continued certain English tra- 
ditions in their family in America, their 
father, for instance, always taking the 
London Times. The work of certain insti- 
tutions in the poor quarters of their own 
city, in which they were all three actively 
engaged, was in part modelled upon similar 
organisations in the East end of London, 
of the advance of which they kept them- 
selves informed. But a dash of flattered 
vanity was added to his gratified surprise, 
when he found that they were familiar 
with his name and his political activity, 
and were in complete sympathy with the 
direction of his work. 

The reserve of the two sisters had com- 
pletely vanished by this time, and had 
given way to a free and happy exchange 
of ideas; while his own friend Margaret 
manifested an additional pleasure by looks 
at her sisters which evidently implied a 
greater degree of proprietorship in their 
new friend, and a touch of pride in the 
effect he was producing upon her sisters, 
as if she were worthy of praise for the dis- 
crimination she had shown. 


8o 


A Homburg Story . 


Thus it was that their tea-party was a 
very pleasant one, and that they spoke and 
acted like old friends. They were all 
sorry when it was time to break up, and, 
having been completely occupied with 
one other, it was only in the moment of 
parting that they could direct their atten- 
tion to the wonderful view at their feet. 
The sun was setting at their backs and 
sent its clear golden rays with a dash of 
scarlet and pink over the tops of the pine 
forests, and, sweeping up a green sheen 
from the trees, lit up the vast expanse of 
plain and the houses of Homburg. 

It was a similar view to the one the two 
friends had gazed at by the spring; but it 
was vaster, less harmonious, more grossly 
panoramic. It had lost the familiarity of 
detail which gave a homelike, sweet touch 
in its proximity to the view below. The 
light was also more fiery, almost theatri- 
cal ; its showy brilliance seemed sophisti- 
cated. 

Both Margaret and Campbell felt this; 
and as they gazed, their eyes were blind 
to the actual scene before them, and the 


A Homburg Story. 81 

vision of the previous view, with the 
whole sweetness of the mood which it had 
evoked, stole over them. They were both 
confident that they had the same thoughts, 
and at last he said, in a mere whisper: 
“The other was lovelier/’ And as he 
turned to her and her eyes met his, a 
blush spread over her face. 

And then they all four coasted down 
the hill. Margaret wished to coast down 
the steep straight road; but the sisters 
remonstrated, and it required Campbell to 
confirm them in their fears that it might 
be dangerous. So they returned by the 
same way through the woods and the long 
avenue. The delight of their rapid spin- 
ning through the wind without any effort 
gave them a sense of joyousness which no- 
body knows who has not coasted on bicycle 
or toboggan or has not galloped across 
country on a good horse. His machine 
being the heaviest of the four, he had 
occasionally to put on the break in order 
not to advance far ahead of his com- 
panions. He would then allow them to 
pass him and would enjoy the sight of the 


82 


A Homburg Story. 


three figures rushing in front of him with 
their thin blouses rustling in the wind. 

As it was late, and he had an engage- 
ment for dinner, they urged him not to 
accompany them home ; and so they left 
him at the door of his lodgings, with 
bright nods and waving of hands, and rode 
on, leaving him alone at his door with a 
sense of being really alone. 


V 


Campbell awoke next morning with a 
peculiar and, to him, new sensation of 
restlessness. 

He had hoped to find the sisters at the 
Kurhaus for the music of the evening, and 
had wandered about, up and down, peering 
for them among the crowd of people, try- 
ing to avoid his acquaintances who would 
stop him to exchange greetings or join 
him while walking. He answered dis- 
tractedly, and shook them off as soon as 
possible. But he could not find those he 
was looking for with increasing eagerness 
and impatience. The sweet face of Mar- 
garet was constantly before his eyes, and 
he heard her voice through the music, as 
the fairest music he had listened to. 
When at last he was in bed, irritated by 
the fruitlessness of his quest, her image, 
as she gazed into the water of the clear 


84 A Homburg Story. 

pool, lulled his mind to peace and rest, 
and he dropped off to sleep with her face 
bowing over his, her rich hair, like a deep 
golden aureole, framing its loveliness. 

But the sense of restlessness came upon 
him with increased intensity in the morn- 
ing, when he started early for the wells 
and found not one of the sisters there. He 
then hoped to see them at the lawn-tennis 
grounds, where he was to practise in a 
double set with the Countess Tournelle, 
who, no longer a girl, was still the most 
graceful of lady players. They played 
against an Austrian, who was more than a 
match for him, and Miss Softly, a most 
vigorous and muscular player who served 
and volleyed like the strongest of men. 
They were badly beaten, and he advised 
his fair partner to choose some better 
player than himself for the tournament, 
which was to begin next day. He recom- 
mended her to take a young Cambridge 
“ half-blue” who had come for the tourna- 
ment ; he presented him, and they at once 
set to work to practise. 

This left him free to search among the 


85 


A Homburg Story. 

motley crowd, of princes, English and 
. foreign, of beautiful women and athletic 
men of all nationalities, seated in chairs 
about the courts where the most interest- 
ing game was being played within the 
grounds, or chatting and walking without. 
But it was all fruitless ; he could not find 
them. 

After luncheon he wandered about in 
the same eager manner, and, for a moment, 
at the “ Cow-house,” he thought he espied 
them sitting at one of the round tables 
under the trees. But when he drew near, 
he found to his disgust that they were the 
three Jewesses. They levelled their eye- 
glasses at him as he advanced, but when 
he recognised them, he merely raised his 
hat and passed on, as if looking for some- 
one else. 

These young ladies had entirely passed 
out of his mind and the range of his inter- 
est, since he saw that they were well pro- 
vided with friends, and had, in fact, a 
number of people constantly flitting about 
them. He had noticed them dining at a 
table near that of the Prince of Gallia on 


86 


A Homburg Story. 


the terrace of the Kurhaus the previous 
evening, and they seemed to have a very 
lively and attentive train of followers. 
The moment his sense of general moral 
obligation had left him, his interest in 
them had ceased , and the aversion which 
their manners had evoked confirmed his 
disgust at their having gone to the ball, 
where their admittance had to be virtually 
forced. 

He was reproaching himself with his 
stupidity in not having asked his Ameri- 
can friends for their address, when sud- 
denly a very simple way to discover their 
whereabouts, which he had strangely over- 
looked before, occurred to him, — namely, 
to examine the Kurliste in which the ad- 
dresses of all Homburg visitors were 
given. He was just turning up hastily 
towards the hotels to consult the lists 
there, when, this time, there Was no doubt 
as to their identity , for he saw them, walk- 
ing towards him along the road which 
leads to the hills. 

He almost ran to meet them, but they 
seemed less responsive than on the previ- 


A Homburg Story. 


87 


ous day. Still he was pleased to note a 
certain embarrassment in the face and 
manner of Margaret in which the pleasure 
of seeing him could not be wholly con- 
cealed. 

As he gave them an account of his vain 
search for them, of his stupidity in not 
having asked them for their address, and 
of his comic ignoring of the Kurliste which 
he was just running off to consult, his good 
humour again warmed them to the friend- 
liness of the previous day, and they in- 
vited him to join them for tea at the 
Wiener Cafe, a short distance up the hill 
in the woods. 

They walked on together like old friends. 
At the Cafe in the woods, there were but 
few people, and when they had seated 
themselves at a table under the trees, at 
same distance from the others, they felt at 
home and chatted on freely. Campbell 
felt thoroughly happy, and in this mood 
he was occasionally brilliant in his talk. 
He felt that “he was showing to advan- 
tage/' Above all, there was a youthful 
freshness and joyousness in his mood, 


88 


A Homburg Story. 


which he had not experienced for many 
years, and which he had thought belonged 
to the past. 

But strange to say, when, on returning, 
he walked alone with Margaret, the buoy- 
ancy of spirit and the ebullience of manner 
left him, and he became serious, almost 
embarrassed, having to make an effort to 
find the right thing to say. Sometimes 
they would both lapse into silence. He 
could not talk about “ things'* or other 
people , he felt an uncontrollable impulse 
to ask her about herself and to talk about 
himself. When they had once begun with 
confidences as to their own experiences 
and feelings, the tone grew warm and 
familiar and a delicious sense of repose 
and sweetness came over him as he list- 
ened to her. But in the midst of her con- 
fidential talk he would notice a certain 
sudden restraint, as if she thought it right 
to check herself and would not allow her 
expansive mood to take its own course. 

Mrs. Morton and Ethel had to do some 
shopping, and so he walked back with Mar- 
garet. When he expressed a desire to see 


A Homburg Story. 89 

their home, she said that she hoped he 
would call. When they arrived at the 
door of their lodgings on the Promenade, 
he did not leave her, and stood talking 
expectantly, until she could not help ask- 
ing him to come up to their drawing room 
for a few minutes. 

There was almost a twinkle of humor- 
ous exultation at his victory over her 
reserve, when he said : — 

“ I should like nothing more. Isn’t that 
your balcony? I should love to sit there 
and chat until your people return.” 

The pugnacious spirit was up in him 
and he resolved to fight, to conquer her 
reserve. The more he felt the charm of 
her personality, the more it occasionally 
produced in him an embarrassment 
amounting to timidity, the more did he 
require the help of his combative spirit, 
which, together with his humour, he had 
inherited from his Irish mother. And 
thus he felt a call upon his determination 
and courage to bend to his will the resist- 
ing power of the girl whose strength of 
character he intuitively divined. 


go A Homburg Story. 

She had taken off her hat, and now, 
with her rich hair freed from the covering 
which makes faces more commonplace, 
she seemed to him a new person, wholly 
herself and wholly bewitching in her per- 
sonality. As she moved about the room, 
to put things in their proper place, he fol- 
lowed her every movement with eyes fas- 
cinated. There was a grace, a sedate 
intimacy in her movements which made 
him feel at home, or long to be so. And 
when, before they went out on the balcony, 
she stood for a moment before him, her 
hands raised to the back of her head to ar- 
range the hairpins, he had to clutch his 
chair tightly not to rush up and clasp her 
in his arms. 

While sitting on the balcony overlook- 
ing the promenade along which a gay 
throng was constantly passing, he began 
by telling her of some of his friends at 
Homburg whom he felt sure she would 
like, and begged her to join him with her 
sisters at luncheon next day, and then to 
go to the lawn-tennis courts. She said 
“ that they were only waiting from day to 


9i 


A Homburg Story. 

day to hear from their relations who were 
at Bayreuth, and whom they were to join 
on their way back to England ; that, there- 
fore, it was no use making new acquaint- 
ances; that, in fact, they liked to be quiet 
and by themselves.” Nor could they go 
out that evening and join him at the music 
before the Kursaal, as he begged her to 
do. The most he could obtain was her 
promise to play a game of lawn-tennis 
with him the next morning punctually at 
ten, before most of the people arrived. 

Meanwhile her sisters returned, and he 
felt that he ought to go, as the dinner hour 
was approaching. So he took his leave, 
but the thought of her clung to him. A 
fascination, absorbing all his thoughts and 
feelings, was upon him, which no one had 
ever before exercised over him. 

He left his friends, as soon as he could 
do it with propriety after dinner, and 
wandered off to the music, seeking a chair 
which was hidden from general view. He 
there dreamed of her. But when the band 
played a waltz (it was the masterpiece of 
waltz-music, Strauss’s Wiener Blut), the 


92 


A Homburg Story. 


melting sentiment of it, the joyous pathos, 
the insinuating naivety the heart-stirring 
rhythm of its plaintive and still gladsome 
melody — all this was too much for him ; 
and he rushed home to dream in his room 
without a light. 

“ Yes,” he said to himself pacing his 
room, “I am in love. That is the plain 
fact. As much in love as any school-boy 
ever was, and I feel as helpless as he 
does.” And he thought of a paraphrase of 
Heine’s “ Es ist eine alte Geschichte” which 
he once addressed to a friend of advanced 
years whom he found smitten in the same 
way : — 

It is an old, old story, 

Yet always seems so new ; 

And wise and grey and hoary, 

We’re boys when love comes true. 


VI 


He played tennis with her the next 
morning, and was astonished to find what 
an excellent player she was. Graceful, 
lithe and strong, rapid in her movements, 
she had a coolness of judgment and a con- 
trol of her temper which made her score 
more than many a more showy player. 
He begged her to be his partner in a 
double in the mixed handicaps at the 
tournament; but she refused with firm- 
ness. 

Nor could he shake her in her refusal 
to persuade her sisters to join him at 
luncheon and dinner parties at the various 
hotels and to be present next day at the 
tournament. He appealed to the artistic 
sense, so highly developed in her, when 
he gave a picture of the gatherings at the 
tournament. 

“What can be lovelier in its way,” he 


94 


A Homburg Story. 


said, “ than the charming grounds, en- 
closed with fine trees, little open vistas 
over meadows like those of an English 
park ; then the players in white, reminding 
one almost of ancient Greek athletes, and 
the mass of varied colour in the ladies’ 
costumes grouped round the ‘court’ of 
greatest interest, the red jackets of the 
‘boys’ dotted about — surely, apart from 
the variegated humanity, which need not 
interest you in itself, the scene is one 
any appreciative eye like yours would 
enjoy.” 

But it was of no avail. Though he saw 
a great deal of the three ladies, and had 
long, delightful walks with Margaret, he 
could not bring them to join in his social 
circle or to mix with others. This desire 
for isolation and shyness seemed so strong, 
that he began to wonder whether it did 
not point to morbid sensitiveness, based 
upon the consciousness of some vulner- 
able point in their antecedents. He had 
made observations of this kind in people 
before. Perhaps there was some scandal 
in the matrimonial relations of their 


A Horn burg Story. 95 

parents, perhaps some disgraceful busi- 
ness failure of the father. 

Among his numerous American friends 
at Homburg he could easily have gained 
information. But he resented the idea of 
making anything approaching inquiry, in 
however covert and indirect a manner, as 
an act of disloyalty, a want of chivalry 
towards his noble and trusting friends. 
He carefully avoided mentioning them to 
anybody; and his friends, including the 
Hewsons, with rare tact on their part, did 
not refer to his new intimacy, though 
they must have seen him in the company 
of these ladies on several occasions, and 
though he neglected his older acquaint- 
ances for them. 

But he resolved to touch upon this 
marked feature in their faultless de- 
meanour in a direct and straightforward, 
though a general and impersonal manner. 

And so, one day, taking a long walk 
with Margaret, with whom he had dis- 
cussed many interesting topics fully, 
while sitting on a bench in the woods and 
resting, he suddenly seized the oppor- 


9 6 


A Homburg Story. 


tunity offered by their discussion of the 
happiest condition of life, to say : 

“Do you know what I think one of the 
most irrational and mischievous causes of 
misery to one’s self and of discomfort to 
others?” 

She looked up inquiringly, and he con- 
tinued, 

“ Sensitiveness. It has done less good 
and more harm than any other human at- 
tribute with a name that has a ring of 
virtue in its sound. Its implication of a 
refined organisation as opposed to coarse- 
ness or bluntness of nervous fibre, its 
kinship to that pretty old-world sensi- 
bility, have deceived people ruled or en- 
slaved by it into the belief that they are 
possessed of a virtue. As a matter of 
fact they are really suffering from a moral 
weakness which ultimately might lead to 
a chronic mental disease, undermining the 
whole of their happy intercourse with 
others, and often their own sanity of 
mind.” 

She started and looked at him, but he 
did not change a muscle of his face as 


97 


A Homburg Story . 

he received her questioning look. She 
frowned with the exertion of framing her 
thoughts and then said : 

“ Are not sensibility and sensitiveness 
more closely allied and more difficult to 
distinguish than you seem to admit? Does 
not the absence of sensitiveness to the 
actions of people about us argue indiffer- 
ence to them, and a carelessness of our 
own moral cleanliness, almost of the 
nature of physical slovenliness with re- 
gard to our personal appearance? I should 
not be pleased to think that one I loved, 
or even liked, was insensible to the differ- 
ence between attention and regard and 
indifference and neglect.” 

“ Yes, you are right there.” And he 
could not help looking into her face and 
her pensive eyes with a thrill of admira- 
tion, while her clear low voice had a 
tremor of earnestness in it as she spoke. 
“ I agree to a certain amount of sensi- 
tiveness with regard to the people we like 
and respect; but that does not apply to 
indifferent people, the man whom we do 
not know well or care to know better. 

7 


9-8 A Homburg Story. 

Sensitiveness towards the people we know 
well and love is a mark of appreciation 
and esteem paid to them ; towards people 
we do not know well or love it is a mark 
of self-depreciation.” 

“ I admire yonr epigram ; but I do not 
agree with it wholly,” she said. “ If I 
thought that a person I loved and admired 
could not wound me, I should either doubt 
my affection and regard for him or my own 
delicacy of perception and self-respect. 
Nor can it be good to encourage too much 
in those we love the sense of absolute 
security as to the effects of their words 
and actions, which leads to the sense of^ 
irresponsibility, to utter regardlessness, 
and, as the commonplace has it, finally to 
contempt.” 

“ Well, I will concede so much to you, 
and I agree with you up to a certain point. 
Pull them up sharp, scold them if you 
will, repel any licentious inroad upon the 
domain of your dignity or just rights! 
But do not carry away a wound to your 
own self-esteem, which it is hard to heal, 
and which implies want of faith in the 


99 


A Homburg Story . 

wholeness of their relation to you, their 
general esteem, fondness or love. Trust 
and faith are, after all, the very corner- 
stones of all intimate human relations; 
and ‘sensitiveness,’ like jealousy, in those 
cases — implies fundamental lack of faith 
in others as well as in one’s self.” 

“ I also must give in to you,” she said, 
as a softer expression stole over her face 
and a look of mixed gratitude and admira- 
tion met Campbell as he gazed straight 
into her eyes. “ Still you cannot rob me 
of the great worship I have of one human 
virtue, self-respect, pride in the best and 
noblest sense of the word, which causes 
us to raise our heads the higher, the more 
the world is against us and tries to force 
us to bend our necks. I worship this 
strength; and a man who was not a 
fighter, who did not stand firmly on his 
feet, — against the whole world, if needs 
be, — I could never respect or admire.” 

While she said this, she had uncon- 
sciously drawn herself up straight as 
she sat there, and looked straight before 
her with a fixed and defiant brilliancy in 


ioo A Homburg Story . 

her eyes — she was the amazon, not the 
nymph. 

“ Ah, but make sure that he is a true 
fighter and not a braggadocio or a Don 
Quixote. ...” 

“I love Don Quixote,” she threw in. 
“ Don’t you know that wonderful passage 
in Heine’s preface to a German translation 
of Cervantes in which he breaks a lance 
for Don Quixote?” 

“I do. It is beautiful. Well, love 
Don Quixote with pity ; but don’t admire 
him. Admiration must be complete, for 
the thing fought for as well* as the manner 
of fighting — or rather for the reason, the 
selection of the cause, as well as the cour- 
age and indomitable perseverance with 
which the cause is pursued. Or else you 
will worship fanatics and madmen as much 
as true heroes.” 

“ They are all better than cowards, 
slaves, toadies and snobs,” she said pas- 
sionately. 

“ So they are,” he continued calmly and 
firmly, “ but those are not the alternatives 
between which to choose. If you must 


IOI 


A Homburg Story. 

fight, fight ; but do not see enemies where 
there are none, or mere windmills. Do 
not waste the sacred flame of beneficent 
wrath upon unworthy objects or in self- 
torture, and fritter away the passionate 
forces that make up heroism upon petty 
sentiments, that become vulgar in their 
pettiness, until your soul and all that is 
lovable in it are eaten away in impotent and 
sterile vanity and disappointment. Parry 
and thrust home, but don’t mouth or 
grimace about fighting before you fight, 
or try to frighten your enemy by passes 
au mur , before the mirror of your wounded 
vanities.” 

His calmness gave way to a stern re- 
sentment in his voice. 

“ I know what I am talking about. I 
have felt the danger myself — who has 
not?” he continued more softly. “ I have 
seen a friend of mine ruined in character 
and efficiency by this curse of sensitive- 
ness.” 

“ How was that?”” she asked, and her 
voice was less firm as she asked. 

“ He was a splendid fellow, powerful and 


102 A Homburg Story. 

refined, with uncommon qualities of heart 
and mind. But he had the misfortune to 
be sent to a great public school in the very 
town in which his father was a petty 
tradesman and dissenting minister. He 
was distinguished and popular at College, 
and, in spite of all the delicate regard and 
encouragement which his friends (and I 
was his greatest friend) could give him, 
the morbid effect of the cruel bullying 
he experienced from the (unconsciously) 
brutal boys at school, the confirmed habit 
of ascribing all failures or accidental 
slights, to his ‘tradesman and dissenting’ 
origin, produced a sensitiveness, a sus- 
piciousness, and finally, a bitterness in 
him which counteracted his native ami- 
ability, made him not only a difficult, but, 
at last, an impossible person to live with. 
He quarrelled continually, instead of fight- 
ing when there was cause ; put the world 
against him by his own perversity ; at last 
warped his mind into eccentricity ; and is 
a lonely, petty schoolmaster now, instead 
of a leader of men, as he was born to be.” 

“ Why ascribe the fault to him,” she said 


A Homburg Story. 103 

eagerly, “ when you mentioned the cause 
in the brutal class prejudice you referred 
to, and the treatment he experienced in 
his early childhood, which, no doubt, was 
occasionally renewed in later life? Why 
are you not angry with the boys at school 
who murdered his nascent powers, the 
schools and institutions which allow or 
encourage this by the very character 
of their organisation, the society which 
breeds such moral cankers?” 

She uttered these words with a deep 
indignation, which almost appeared to be 
directed against him. When he did not 
answer at once, she looked round at him, 
and a blush of embarrassment came over 
her face, as she said softly : — 

“ Oh, I beg your pardon for talking in 
that tone to you. I know you are opposed 
to these abuses, and are in no way in sym- 
pathy with them. I know your life-work 
is directed towards the checking of these 
muddy courses at the very fountain-head. 
Forgive me my impetuosity.” 

“ I certainly forgive you ; there is noth- 
ing to forgive. I like you for the power 


104 


A Homburg Story . 


of feeling strongly on what is worth 
strong feeling. But you have just paid 
me the compliment to say that I was fight- 
ing this enemy of humanity and of the 
spirit of good at his strongholds. That is 
the main point. Listen to me : — 

“ I reproach my friend with not having 
realised the wholeness of life, not having 
distinguished what is important and what 
is not. He made his own self-respect, or 
rather, vanity, of greater importance than 
all the great qualities, and, in consequence, 
duties and destinies, which ought to have 
shaped his life. He failed to see the 
Proportion of Life , which is the funda- 
mental principle of right living. Nearly 
all faults and all disasters, personal, do- 
mestic, and public, come from this mis- 
taken vision. Stand on the highest point 
of your life, of your self, and view things 
about you without blinkers and without 
distorting glasses (convex or concave) of 
momentary and local prejudices, or narrow 
selfish desires, and you will then appre- 
ciate the proportion of life. What is a 
petty squabble of the day, of a country, 


A Homburg Story. 105 

town or district, the provincial prejudice 
of a set or class, to him whose eyes en- 
compass the world and its past as well as 
its future ! What is a passing disappoint- 
ment of a set in a narrow community to 
us to-day, when we put into the scale the 
Armenian massacres of which you read 
this morning, in which men, women and 
children are butchered, and a fine race 
is being exterminated; what are these 
‘social’ questions, when compared to the 
great economical questions, the Eastern, 
the Far East, the African question, the 
solution or complication of which will 
move the whole civilised world one way 
or the other for centuries? And my friend 
was made to work at these great move- 
ments, to affect them ; his life had bigness 
in it; but he was not strong enough and 
big enough in his character to strike great 
blows at fate, instead of whining at an oc- 
casional pin-prick. With all his faculty 
of concentration of thought in his work, he 
had not the power of ignoring that which 
was unessential to his life and was un- 
worthy of his attention, — all because of 


io6 A Homburg Story. 

his petty vanity, — or pride and sensitive- 
ness as you would call it. If the highest 
power of intellect is often to remember 
and to concentrate attention, the highest 
development of will and character is some 
times to ignore and to forget.” 

“But,” she asked, “how about people 
who are not big, whose powers and whose 
life are not cast in the great mould you 
attribute to your friend? How are they 
to deal with those general stings, the 
origin of which they can hardly fix, which 
remain stings and smart, though they do 
not kill?” 

“ They are to assign to them their due 
proportion,” he answered with emphasis, 
“ to deal with them as little stings, lightly, 
with the levity which behoves them. You 
cannot adjust the surface-life of society on 
the principles of science, or even of ethics. 
Because such social intercourse, the es- 
sence and purpose of which lies in the in- 
tercourse itself, and not in some ulterior 
common aim to be achieved in the sphere 
of utility, truth, or goodness, — because 
such intercourse is artistic in its nature, 


A Homburg Story . 107 

neither theoretical, practical, nor ethical. 
It must therefore be light and playful in 
its action, must have its qualities in the 
grace and spontaneous attractiveness of 
personalities, and their words and deeds. 
As soon as it loses this spontaneity, like 
the work of the artist, it loses its social 
effectiveness. Appeals to truth, good- 
ness, justice or expediency are of no avail, 
— they are, on the contrary, destructive 
of social intercourse.” 

“ I really do not quite understand you. 
I am sure it is my own density, or that I 
have not thought much on these subjects. 
I always fancied that our life, in any and 
every one of its phases, could never be 
severed from its ethical results and pur- 
poses,” Margaret said, and a puzzled ex- 
pression came over her face, manifesting 
the effort it cost her to follow his thoughts, 
— which were evidently new to her. 

“ Quite so. You warn me opportunely 
not to overstate my case. I am speaking 
of the art of living sociably quite apart 
from the wider life, including the struggle 
for existence, charity, and the general fel- 


io8 A Homburg Story. 

lowship of humanity. Of course society, 
even in the lightest aspect of its activity, 
has final ethical aims, by the canons of 
which we must ultimately test its right of 
existence and settle its main course. A 
society, however pleasant in its appear- 
ance and flow, which is fundamentally im- 
moral in its tone, structure and effect, — 
nay, which does not ultimately tend to 
bring out the human best in its members, 
— is bad and ought never to appear pleas- 
ant to sane and refined taste. So in the 
domain of art, its sister sphere in spirit, 
the immoral, which does not elevate, but 
lowers, ought in itself to counteract and 
to dissipate the effect of formal beauty. 
This is what the German philosopher Kant 
has called the Primateship of Practical 
Reason or Ethics. Let us all recognize 
this, and we are doing so in the very topic 
of our own conversation. On the other 
hand, a social set which is directly founded 
upon, and consciously, by word and deed, 
sets itself the task of furthering intellec- 
tual self-improvement, moral elevation, 
or practical and economical discovery and 


A Homburg Story. 109 

progress, will be clumsy, ungainly, and 
‘ unsocial ’ in its constitution and working. 
So also a work of art which is intended 
directly to illustrate anatomy or Darwinian 
heredity, to preach charity or self-control, 
to facilitate communication or solve a 
question of currency, will fail to produce 
any artistic effect. Such societies will 
certainly produce sets of prigs and pedants 
who are likely to bore and disgust each 
other without leading to much self-im- 
provement. Society is more concerned 
with the manner than with the substance 
of life — the form is essential to the matter, 
as in art.” 

Margaret smiled, while she said : “ I am 
beginning to see your meaning. This 
question of the manner, I see, is of the 
greatest importance in social intercourse.” 

“ Not only manner, but manners, which 
are, as regards social intercourse, the 
canons of proportion and harmony in taste, 
as the dictates of virtue and righteousness 
are in our moral life. Ars est celare artem, 
applies to the art of living pleasantly to- 
gether as it does to a picture, a poem or a 


no 


A Homburg Story. 

song. It is the intentionality, the inter- 
ested move which destroys the grace and 
attractiveness of action and manners, 
makes mechanical what ought to be spon- 
taneous and organic, and repels and dis- 
gusts us." 

“ Oh, you are right there, I see that,” 
Margaret said, with a ring of pleased un- 
derstanding in her voice, “ I have so often 
felt that.” Campbell, whose mode of ex- 
presson had become laboured, now seemed 
to breathe more freely, as if relieved by 
overcoming an arduous task, and he con- 
tinued more rapidly and fluently. 

“ Take the question we are discussing — 
injustice which wounds our pride and sen- 
sitiveness in the lightly social sphere, — 
surely it would not be an effective method 
of convincing the social culprits to point 
out that the object of their slight was the 
worthiest person morally, the most su- 
perior person intellectually, and the most 
successful and efficient person in practical 
life ! They might answer simply : ‘ That 
this may all be very true; but that his 
boots creaked insufferably, that his talk 


Ill 


A Homburg Story. 

was heavy and tedious, and his temper 
uncertain and trying. ’ And if the wounded 
man himself resents injustice manifestly — 
if his true pride and self-esteem are so low 
as to cast off conventional armour and 
stand naked before his scoffers — if he 
deepens his own scratch into a wound, and 
makes the offence so heavy that it is en- 
tirely removed out of the ‘ society ’ sphere 
into the domain of eternal morality and 
Christian charity, then he may evoke pity 
and stir up self-reproach in the hearts of 
the offenders, — neither of which attitudes 
of mind are conducive to amenable and 
pleasant social intercourse in a salon or a 
ball-room.” 

“ Oh, you are indeed right,” Margaret 
said, with a tone of serious conviction. 

“ You see,” Campbell continued eagerly, 
“ self-assertion makes recognition from 
others most difficult. The man who as- 
serts his own virtue, the debt of gratitude 
which we owe him, the man with a griev- 
ance, — they all incite our opposition, even 
if what they claim be true. ‘Just because 
you claim it, you shall not have it,’ we 


I 12 


A Homburg Story. 


seem to say. I have often wondered why 
this should be the case, and why, when I 
have heard a person lay claim to a virtue 
or a right which he really possessed, or to 
a success achieved, even though it be true, 
I have often felt an uncomfortable dis- 
taste, approaching disgust. ‘The facts 
are true, and being true, why should he 
not know it, and knowing it, why should 
he humbug and not say it?’ I have asked 
myself. And all the same my revulsion 
exists.” 

“ Oh, I have so often felt that in life, and 
in literature, especially with authors like 
Rousseau. Can you explain why this 
should be so?” Margaret asked. 

“ Well, apart from our native sense of 
opposition and perversity, which makes us 
resent security and cocksureness, and may 
not be quite justifiable, there is a reason- 
able ground for our mistrust. A thing 
once said or written becomes fixed and, 
as it were, isolated from all the ground- 
work of its surrounding justifications and 
qualifications ; it becomes more absolute, 
more gross, and loses its redeeming pro- 


A Homburg Story. 113 

portion. Furthermore, as regards the 
speaker, th« altered nature of the thing 
once said, must fix and increase his self- 
consciousness, and in so far counteract the 
spontaneity of his manner to us, which the 
artistic character of social intercourse de- 
mands. We are then inclined to suspect 
interested and intentional motives in what 
he says and does — he is no longer grace- 
ful. It is the curse of injustice that, be- 
sides the wrong done us, we suffer a more 
lasting injury in that we become conscious 
of our own rights and virtues and then 
assert them.” 

“ I now see what you mean by dealing 
lightly with the blows struck at our own 
pride and sensitiveness,” Margaret said. 
“ But how would you deal lightly with an 
affront offered you by implication which 
you could not ignore?” 

“ Well, let me give you an instance from 
my own experience as an illustration. I 
had a great friend, alas, now dead, who 
was literally the noblest man, with the 
largest and warmest heart that I have ever 
met or ever expect to meet. If I except 
8 


1 14 A Homburg Story. 

my father and mother, I owe to him more 
than to any human being. His justice, 
strength and purity, as well as his sym- 
pathy and charity, were unfailing and all- 
encompassing. Though he was deeply 
learned in his own line as few men of our 
century are, he was still wide-minded and 
polished in his tastes and manners. And 
pervading all his kindliness and searching 
delicacy, was a strong sense of humour 
which gave him, to an exceptional de- 
gree, that feeling of life -proportion 
which he kept duly balanced in him- 
self and in his varied surroundings. 
He was a learned man by profession, 
and was a Fellow of one of our great 
colleges. 

“ One day, while staying at a country 
house, an octogenarian of distinction, a 
fellow guest, who had been at the same 
university years before my friend, not 
knowing the college to which he belonged 
(which was St Paul’s), said to him across 
the dinner table : 

‘“You come from Oxbridge, Sir. Do 
you not think the Fellows of St Paul’s the 


A Homburg Story. 115 

greatest blackguards on the face of the 
earth? ’ 

“ There was an uncomfortable pause, 
and then my friend said quite pleasantly, 
but seriously, to the old gentleman : 

“ ‘I see what you mean, Sir.’ 

“ And he did see what he meant. In the 
days when the old gentleman was at Ox- 
bridge, the Fellows of St Paul’s were in 
truth a set of idle, hard-drinking, low- 
sporting and generally low-lived people. 
Since the days of my friend, however, 
things have completely changed; until it 
had become the college in that university 
recognised as possessing the most distin- 
guished and most refined body of Fellows. 
The remark of the old gentleman had 
therefore truth from his point of view. It 
was not meant as a personal insult to my 
friend, as his college was not known. 
Finally, my friend did not wish to make 
the old man uncomfortable and miserable 
for the rest of the evening; nor had he 
the right to mar the pleasant tone of the 
party for his host and the rest of the com- 
pany. On the other hand, he could not 


n6 A Homburg Story 

acquiesce in the inaccurate statement. 
His phrase hit the nail on the head ; and 
I have often adopted it myself under simi- 
lar circumstances.” 

“It is indeed most apt,” Margaret said, 
with amusement in her voice. 

“ People do not wish to offend 
us,” Campbell continued with warmth. 
“ There are few who have such bad taste ; 
for we have a right to consider ourselves 
nice enough. Well-bred people manage 
not to see much of us, if their dislike 
amounts to a desire to insult us. These 
‘insults by implication’ ought not to be 
taken seriously. How often have you 
heard remarks like: ‘Englishmen are 
coarse in moral fibre, blunt and selfish in 
manner, a nation of shop-keepers; the 
Scotch are clannish, dry in spirit, greedy 
and pushing; the French are untruthful 
and sensual; the Germans unchivalrous 
and petty; the Italians slipshod in char- 
acter, a nation of adventurers; and the 
Americans sharp and common.’ If re- 
marks of this kind, or put in a more re- 
fined and moderate manner, are expressed 


A Homburg Story. 117 

when any member of such a nation is 
present, need he resent it or feel hurt in 
his pride? It could not have been meant 
for him except by people whose coarse 
rudeness puts them beyond the pale of any 
further intercourse. All we need realise 
is, ' that these things are said by people 
who make hasty generalisations on an in- 
sufficient basis, or are fond of strong lan- 
guage and over-statements. And we need 
simply think or say: ‘I see what you 
mean!’ Very often there is considerable 
justification for what they say, and the 
national failings which even the finest 
nation may possess, the results of their 
past history and present conditions of life, 
may account for the generalisation, though 
it may not justify the exaggerated form 
of expression. And why need we be so 
childish as to be offended by the recogni- 
tion of our nation’s weaknesses, especially 
when no insult is meant to us ; and as they 
are ignorant of our nationality, it is evi- 
dent that they do not attribute these fail- 
ings to us?” 

“ I grant you that all that may be taken 


n8 A Homburg Story. 

lightly,” Margaret said: “they are trivial 
offences which do not touch the main 
springs of life ; they can easily be ignored 
or met lightly. But when your poor 
friend, the son of the dissenting tradesman, 
finds that a post in life, in which he can 
manifest the great powers you said were 
in him, is closed to him because of such a 
‘social’ prejudice; when an Irishman in 
America reads in the advertisements ‘no 
Irish need apply ; or an American mother 
hears that her well-behaved daughter must 
leave a good private school in which she 
is making progress and is happy, because 
the head-mistress informs her that some 
fashionable parents object to have their 
daughters in the same school with Jew- 
esses; can they then remain indifferent 
and pass it over lightly, is it enough to 
say: ‘I see what you mean’?” 

As she spoke Margaret’s tone became 
more impassioned and her cheek was aglow 
with indignation. 

“You are right, my dear friend, those 
are not things to be taken lightly. They 
are matters for fight. They go deeper 


A Homburg Story. 119 

than the mere surface life of society, — 
they have nothing to do with this; and 
here we can fight and bring heavy guns to 
bear on the enemy. These are moral and 
ethical questions and not points of grace- 
ful social intercourse and refinement. 
But, 'in our fighting, as in our work, let us 
keep our social life apart, and not lose the 
ease and naturalness we there require.” 

“ That would be true if the division were 
all so simple,” Margaret rejoined eagerly. 
“ For the social and the more serious 
spheres of life may overlap, and the gen- 
eral prejudice may extend its poisonous 
ramifications into the midst of men’s 
social life, and they may not be able to 
escape from it. Are they then to bend 
their necks and still to say lightly : ‘ I see 
what you mean,’ when what is meant is 
bad, and cruel and vulgar? How can you 
ignore these insults when they obtrude 
themselves upon your attention?” 

“ Yes, you are right, those are cases' that 
can neither be ignored nor passed over 
lightly. I will give you an instance that 
occurred here the other day.” And he 


120 A Homburg Story. 

proceeded to tell her the incident of the 
three Jewesses and the ball. He had got 
as far in his account as the sending of the 
tickets at last, when she burst in with the 
question : 

“ But, surely, they did not go?” and 
there was a tone of intense indignation 
and protest in her voice. 

“ They did,” he answered. 

“ Then they were devoid of all proper 
pride and utterly contemptible,” she con- 
tinued with some passion. “ They de- 
served any ignoble treatment at the hands 
of any society. They must have been ut- 
terly devoid of all delicacy of feeling and 
even self-respect.” 

“ I agree with you there. That was 
a case in which natural pride and dig- 
nity of character ought to have guided 
them.” 

“ What course would you have pursued 
in such a case,” she asked, “ in cases of 
that class?” 

“Well, I should have withdrawn from a 
circle where such low, snobbish and igno- 
rant ideas prevailed. I should avoid such 


A Homburg Story. 12 1 

a set as not being either interesting or 
worthy of my intercourse. If the whole 
place were infected by such a spirit, I 
should avoid the place." 

“ Exactly," she put in, “that is what I 
should do. ...” 

“But,” he continued, “I should take 
great care to dispel the matter from my 
mind, as unworthy of my notice, as the 
people were not fit for my company. The 
action affected their dignity, not my own, 
which is not in need of confirmation from 
them. I should freely choose company 
congenial to me on positive grounds; 
and, above all, I should exert myself 
not to allow such an experience to 
affect my character, my general habit 
of looking upon people and of estimat- 
ing myself." 

“I am with you," Margaret said with 
decision. “ But let us be sympathetic. 
The difficulty remains for them. Those 
ladies are surely handicapped in their 
social bearing, as compared with those to 
whom such things cannot occur ; they can- 
not have the same freedom and grace of 


122 A Homburg Story. 

manner, when the possibility of such an 
affront is always before them.” 

“ Well,” he answered, “ the world is 
large, in reality and in our thoughts. If a 
prejudice exists in one place or in one set, 
we can keep out of the way of it ; and if 
we cannot always keep it away from our 
eyes, then there is the moral and intellec- 
tual power of ignoring that minor part 
of existence, and of concentrating our 
thoughts and energies upon the more im- 
portant, more noble and more beautiful 
things of life. In this my unhappy friend 
was wanting. ‘Society * and that phase of 
gregarious social life are after all not im- 
portant. We can always have work, the 
higher pleasures, and friends; we are 
almost better off not to be in touch 
with anything that calls itself ‘society ’ 
or is recognized by the newspapers as 
such.” 

“I heartily agree with you,” she said 
earnestly. “ Still, I am filled with indig- 
nation when I think of what, for instance, 
Jews in Germany must suffer from the so- 
called Anti-Semitic movements, which do 


123 


A Homburg Story. 

not turn on definite rights which they can 
fight for, and still the persecutions can 
never be ignored.” 

“ I warmly assent to that,” Campbell 
said eagerly. “ Were I a Jew in Germany 
— and, perhaps, the most refined and gen- 
tlemanlike friends I have here are Jews — 
I should either have to leave the country 
or to fight duels every week. 

“ Now, to sum up most of what we have 
been discussing : I still hold that in- social 
matters, we must not encourage ‘sensi- 
tiveness and pride. ’ The person offended 
cannot fight for his ‘social’ rights with 
effect upon others or without loss of dig- 
nity and grace of demeanour to himself. 
But we others, those who see the wrong 
and are not affected by it, must stand up 
and fight. That’s what I mean to do 
wherever I have an opportunity; that is 
the sphere where chivalry in modern times 
can manifest itself. On the other hand, 
let the victims of such prejudice not make 
our task difficult, and let them accept 
freely and graciously the friendly hand 
which we offer without reserve and the 


124 A Homburg Story . 

service of honour which we do without 
any claim upon gratitude. Amen,” he 
said. 

And she whispered “ Amen.” 

Then they rose and returned home. 


VII 


Whatever the effect of this conversa- 
tion may have been upon Margaret, it cer- 
tainly occupied Campbell’s thoughts for 
the rest of the day. His indignation at 
such actions as the matter of the dance 
was, if anything, increased, and his deter- 
mination to fight such abuses wherever 
and whenever they came in his way was 
made firmer. 

He began to consider the three Jewesses 
of the dance more charitably, thought of 
the possibility that they might not have 
realised all the preliminary discussion 
about them, and decided in his mind that 
people who were at all open to such af- 
fronts ought to be judged more leniently. 
He decided that, during his stay at Hom- 
burg, he would still stand by them, and, 
as a first practical step, he recalled the 
fact that he was invited to take a walk 


126 


A Homburg Story. 


with the Prince of Gallia the afternoon of 
the next day, and to dine with him at the 
Kurhaus in the evening, and he decided to 
broach the matter to him if an opportunity 
offered itself. This opportunity came in 
a most natural manner in the course of his 
walk with his royal friend. 

For the Prince of Gallia was really his 
friend. At all events his own feelings for 
the Prince were those of a warm attach- 
ment. What drew Campbell to his royal 
friend with real affection was the deep 
humanity in the nature and mode of action 
of this Prince. He was truly loyal and 
warm-hearted, full of genuine human 
kindness, always anxious to help or to do 
some good or graceful action to whomso- 
ever he met, high or low. Campbell, 
when he thought of him, always remem- 
bered him as he saw him one day in his 
country home, taking the greatest pains to 
put a shy young curate, who had been 
asked in at the eleventh hour to avoid 
thirteen at dinner, at his ease. He had 
paid more attention to this simple youth, 
than to any of the great people who were 


A Homburg Story. 


127 


guests in the royal house. This to Camp- 
bell was the keynote to the Prince’s char- 
acter. 

The Prince was also fond of Campbell 
and fond of his society. In fact, Camp- 
bell, in his wide circle of acquaintances 
among all conditions of men and in many 
countries, counted a number of royal 
friends who were all much attached to 
him. This may have astonished many 
people, who did not know him well. He 
had satisfied himself on this point by say- 
ing to himself : “ So long as I am nice to 
my humblest friends and my servants, I 
have a right to be nice to princes who like 
my company and whose society I like.” 
One of the reasons why he got on so well 
with people of this condition was, that he 
was perfectly free and natural with them, 
and, barring the necessary formalties, 
which he adhered to as an officer obeys 
discipline in the army, he viewed them 
truly and appreciated or avoided them for 
their good qualities or faults as he did all 
other people. He asked no favours and 
had no personal interests to push, nor did 


128 


A Homburg Story . 


he even wish to profit in social prestige by 
his intercourse with them. This they 
knew or felt, and this, no doubt, was one 
reason why his pleasant and interesting 
personality had free sway over their affec- 
tions. 

Still, it sometimes may have evoked 
comment, that a radical politician should 
be the personal friend of princes. And 
during his walk with the Prince a ques- 
tion on this point, put by the Prince 
himself, set the talk in the direction 
which Campbell was longing to give 
it. 

While they were walking in the woods, 
the Prince had at first talked over with 
Campbell the prospects of an educational 
institution in the welfare of which they 
were both deeply interested, and the 
means of raising funds for its support. 
When they had dismissed this subject, the 
Prince turned to him and said : 

“ Campbell, you know I don’t talk party 
politics, but I have often wondered what 
views a man like you, whose general polit- 
ical ideas I know, has of monarchy and 


129 


A Homburg Story. 

the position of a monarch. Do you mind 
telling me?” 

With the exception of the foreign poli- 
tics of the empire, concerning which the 
Prince would sometimes talk and manifest 
considerable thought, insight and grasp, 
he had never heard him express opinions 
on political questions of the day. He evi- 
dently did not think it right to interfere 
with them. 

“Well, Sir,” Campbell answered, “if it 
interests and pleases you to know what I 
think, I may venture to tell you. Of 
course I have had to think on this ques- 
tion and to make up my mind, up to a 
certain point. Whatever my final ideals 
of government may be, I think that the 
constitutional monarchy as we have it is, 
for us as we are, the best thing. 

“ Of course you must know, Sir, that I 
am aware of all the arguments against 
hereditary monarchy and feel their force. 
The arguments in its favor which affect 
me most strongly are, among others, these : 
—First, I think the stability of an admin- 
istrative head, in what is, after all, a 
9 


130 A Homburg Story . 

republican form of government by the 
people, a great advantage; especially as 
it allows the questions of real and practi- 
cal importance among the people to come 
to the fore, undistracted by the constant 
struggle and passions moving round the 
general form and constitution of the gov- 
ernment as such. Then, as things human 
are, the consciousness that the responsibil- 
ity and the bearings of each act on the 
part of the head of the state, do not end 
with his life or the term of office, but that 
when he even works selfishly for his imme- 
diate posterity, the consequences recoil 
upon the family — this may tend to make 
far-sighted action more real and intense. 
But the really important function of a 
monarch is, to my mind, social.” 

“ How do you mean that?” asked the 
Prince. 

“ Well, Sir, I believe that the social posi- 
tion which a monarch holds may be turned 
to the greatest practical use. It is a power 
which cannot be exercised in the same di- 
rect way by any other force in modern 
society. A king can -make fashionable 


A Homburg Story . 131 

whatever he likes. And I believe that 
fashion is most effective in fixing a social, 
and even a moral, tone. When duelling 
and a certain wildness of life were in fash- 
ion, no preaching could counteract them. 
But make them unfashionable and disap- 
proval works its way through all layers of 
society. The social and moral tone of a 
nation thus lies to a certain extent in the 
hand of a monarch. It is one of the many 
reasons why I deplore so deeply the pre- 
mature death of the Emperor Frederick; 
because I feel sure he would, in a country, 
where the army and bureaucracy set the 
social tone, have brought intellectual and 
artistic life to the forefront of social esteem, 
and would have made what is really the 
best at the same time the most fashion- 
able." 

“ That certainly would put great powers 
and responsibilities upon us. Do you 
think our power in this respect works so 
directly and effectively?” 

“I do, Sir,” Campbell continued more 
eagerly ; and he felt that his opportunity 
had arrived. “ When, for instance, people 


132 A Homburg Story . 

are snobbishly excluded from higher social 
circles, the ruler can stultify prejudice 
by recognising the people thus wronged. 
Take the prejudices against certain voca- 
tions in life, nationalities, beliefs, the 
movements against the Jews.” 

And he now recounted the instance of 
the three ladies. He was right in his esti- 
mate of the Prince’s character in this re- 
spect. He detested such unchivalrous 
action, and he at once asked Campbell to 
introduce the ladies to him at the earliest 
opportunity ; while, with his fondness for 
chaff, he said to Campbell, lifting his finger 
warningly, when they parted: 

“ But I also want to know the other 
young ladies with whom you are always 
seen, and whom, I am told, you keep entire- 
ly to yourself. I shall see you at dinner 
this evening.” And, shaking hands, they 
parted. 


VIII 


The Prince’s dinner-party on the terrace 
of the Kurhaus that evening was a very 
pleasant one. He was entertaining a 
Russian Grand-Duke with his wife, a real 
grande-dame in appearance, bearing and 
manner, and her charming sister; old 
Lady Sarah Mannering, a cross between 
a motherly friend and a good fellow; 
two distinguished peeresses, mother and 
daughter, and an English peer of the 
sporting type, with his good-natured 
spouse; Sir Harry Ruston, the veteran 
king of war correspondents and most witty 
and sparkling of talkers, who has never 
wounded with his wit ; Campbell and the 
Prince’s aides-de-camp . 

Campbell was seated between the Grand- 
Duke’s sister-in-law and the younger peer- 
ess, and could not have had pleasanter 
neighbours. But he was somewhat pre- 


134 


A Homburg Story. 


occupied; for, in winding among the 
tables to join his party, he had passed 
that of the three Jewesses, who were din- 
ing with quite a party of their own. He 
had bowed in a more affable manner than 
before, and they had smiled at him in a 
friendly way ; but again followed him with 
their lorgnettes held up to their eyes. He 
could not help dwelling upon the talk he 
had had with Margaret the day before, 
and the sweet and solemn spirit of the 
girl was over him and kept him from 
joining freely in the sprightly talk about 
him. 

In spite of the good cheer, he was re- 
lieved when the Prince gave the signal for 
rising. 

While he was helping the Prince on with 
his cape, he whispered : 

“ Those three ladies are here, Sir.” 

“ Take me to them,” the Prince said, and 
bade his guests wait one minute, while 
he advanced with Campbell towards the 
table of the three Jewesses. 

“ They are at that middle table in front 
of us, sir. May I go and tell them?” 


A Homburg Story . 135 

“ What, those three tall ladies in white?” 
the Prince asked. 

“ Yes, sir,” said Campbell. 

The Prince gave an amused chuckle, 
hardly able to contain his mirth. 

“ Why, those are the Princesses of Rix- 
enblitz-Galgenstein, a mediatised family 
of the north of Germany; they are re- 
lated to most of the royal families of 
Europe ; they are some sort of cousins of 
mine.” 

And he advanced to the table, all the 
party rising as he greeted the ladies. 

“ My friend, Mr. Campbell, was just go- 
ing to introduce me to you,” he said to the 
ladies. “ He made a mistake which only 
does you and him honour,” he added, look- 
ing at Campbell, who stood in some con- 
fusion and embarrassment. 

As they had also finished their dinner, 
the Prince asked them to join him, and 
both parties went down to the music, where 
the front seats had, by a kind of tradition, 
been reserved for the Prince. It was here 
that they listened to the music, and gave 
an opportunity to people to stare at the 


136 A Homburg Story . 

Prince, a practice in which especially 
English old maids were persistently as- 
siduous. 

Campbell sat between two of the sisters. 
He conversed freely with them, and their 
manners seemed much better than when 
he had first met them. Was it owing to 
the fact that he was now a more fully ac- 
credited person, or, rather that his mind 
was free from all prejudice? Some fea- 
tures which had disturbed him before, 
such as the imperfect English, were 
now satisfactorily accounted for. But 
some others, their bad manners and 
bad dancing, he could not forgive 
them. 

On breaking up, the Prince nudged 
Campbell, amused with the good joke 
against him, and said threateningly : 
“ Now, mind you, I want to know the 
other ladies you keep from us !” 

As he walked home he wondered as to 
what his unbiassed attitude to the Prin- 
cesses ought to be. He decided in his mind 
that he ought to conform to the rules of 
etiquette whenever he met them ; but that, 


137 


A Homburg Story. 

as they in no way attracted him in them- 
selves and were not congenial to him, he 
was not to seek their company or any more 
intimate acquaintanceship. He could not 
help contrasting the charm and grace of 
Margaret and her sisters with the hard, 
self-centred and awkward manners of these 
Princesses. And thus, thinking of Marga- 
ret again, he entered his room and found 
on his table a note which he opened and 
read with growing interest. It was from 
Margaret and ran : 

Dear Mr. Campbell, — I have been 
thinking and thinking on all that you said 
to-day. You can hardly have realised how 
every word applied to my own case or the 
deep impression your words have made. 
I feel as though that conversation of yes- 
terday marked an epoch in my life. I am 
not exaggerating when I say this, nor 
when I assure you that I shall be grateful 
as long as I live for the influence you have 
thus exercised over me. 

My sisters and I are thankful to you 
for your kindness to us during the 


138 A Homburg Story . 

last days of our stay here when we 
needed such kindness most. You have 
converted what I thought would be a 
period of misery into one of exceptional 
happiness. 

Our stay is now coming to an end. We 
leave to-morrow afternoon for Frankfurt, 
where we join our relations on our way 
back to England. 

May I ask as a last kindness, that you 
will come for a walk with me to-morrow 
morning at 9.30? There is something I 
must tell you, which, when I consider all 
your unreserved confidence, I ought, per- 
haps, to have told you before. And I 
should not like to leave without having 
told you freely, what may not be of any 
import to you, but what, has so filled my 
whole mind during these last days, that 
I almost look upon it as a matter kept by 
me from your knowledge, which you had 
a claim to know. 

Do not trouble to answer if you can join 
me here at 9. 30 to-morrow. 

Gratefully and sincerely yours, 

Margaret Lewson. 


A Homburg Story. 


i39 


His thoughts were with her as he lay 
awake in bed, and when resolution had 
quieted his mind tossing about on the 
waves of passion, he fell asleep to dream 
of her. 


IX 


The next morning he arose early and 
sent his valet to Margaret with a note say- 
ing that, if it made no difference to her, he 
would propose that they should bicycle 
instead of walking. 

So it was that, at half-past nine, they 
started on their bicycles and took their 
way towards the Tannenwald and Saal- 
burg. 

Margaret wore the same costume as on 
the first day of their meeting. She did 
not say much after the greeting; and as 
they rode on silently, she seemed absorbed 
in thoughts that were weighing on her 
mind. When he told her that the Prince 
wished to make her acquaintance and that 
of her sisters, she answered quietly and 
firmly : 

“ I am afraid that cannot be ; for we 
must leave this afternoon. I hope it will 


A Homburg Story. 141 

not appear rude. It is kind of him and 
kind of you, and I appreciate it fully.” 

As with common consent, they rode on 
through the avenue and then turned up 
the hill, dismounting and pushing their 
machines. When they came to the little 
path into the woods, Campbell led the way 
and Margaret followed. Soon they were 
at the beautiful spot with the spring. 

When they arrived there, a haze was 
over the plains and valley and over the 
houses of Homburg; but the sky was 
bright above them and promised a fair and 
warm day. There were a few clouds which 
were still hiding the sun, drawn up by the 
sun’s warmth to hide its brilliant light for 
a time; but he sent his curtained rays 
through the cloudlets, and they were slow- 
ly melting away. 

Campbell arranged two seats with dry 
boughs and pine-needles, and she sat 
beside him, both looking over the 
plain below, their eyes shielded from 
the sunlight by the passing mist and 
clouds. 

Margaret began after a short pause. 


142 


A Homburg Story. 


Her voice was at first colourless and she 
spoke without signs of emotion. 

“ What has been occupying my mind 
during the days I have known you, and 
has been upon my spirits with deadening 
weight, is the insult which we experienced 
the day before I met you. 

“We are the three Jewesses who had 
tickets refused them for the dance, and for 
whom you so nobly entered the lists. I 
will tell you how it happened. 

“ When we arrived here in high spirits 
about three weeks ago, it was with some 
English friends of ours who had persuaded 
us to join them. With their friends and 
some of our own, among whom were some 
American ladies with whom I had been at 
school, and who had enjoyed the hospital- 
ity of my father’s house, we had a pleasant 
circle, and joined in all the amusements of 
the place. We were fond of dancing and 
took part in several of these dances. 

“ On the day preceding the dance in 
question, an Englishman of our acquaint- 
ance asked us to go, and said he would 
procure the tickets. But the tickets did 


A Homburg Story. 


i43 


not come that day nor on the morning or 
afternoon of the dance, and we at last had 
to notice that the Englishman endeavoured 
to escape meeting us. In his avoidance of 
us, as well as in his manner when circum- 
stances threw us together, he manifested 
such embarrassment, that after he told 
us, with many apologies, ‘that the num- 
bers were full and there were no more 
tickets to be had, ’ the truth dawned upon 
us. The explanations which he thought 
it necessary to make in addition made the 
refusal clear. In the evening, just before 
dinner, a messenger came to our lodgings, 
evidently despatched in haste, with the 
tickets sent by a person unknown to us. 

“ Of course we did not go. But the blow 
it was to me I can hardly convey to you. I 
began to see everything in the light of that 
affront, and perhaps innocent deeds and 
remarks made by some of the ladies be- 
fore, strangenesses of manner, all appeared 
in a new, and as I thought, true aspect 
against the background of this insult. 
Oh, the misery it was to us! We should 
have left at once, had we not made an 


144 


A Homburg Story . 


appointment with our relations whom 
we meet to-day. But we decided to keep 
out of the way of any possible further 
slight. This experience was certainly 
beginning to sadden, if not to embitter, 
my life. And then we met you, and your 
kindness, especially your talk yesterday, 
has counteracted the evil. It came in 
good time, and I feel sure it has saved me 
from a grave moral disease which was be- 
ginning to lay its hold upon me. I thank 
you warmly for this. 

“ But I should be conveying a wrong im- 
pression to you were I to lead you to be- 
lieve that this Homburg experience was 
an absolute surprise to me, with the nature 
of which I had been completely unfamiliar. 

“ It is true that for the greater part of 
my life I remained quite ignorant of the 
existence of such a prejudice; nor have 
the results ever before made themselves 
directly and grossly felt by me or my 
family. Our home in New England was a 
very happy one, and our circle of friends 
was wide and varied. My father’s house 
formed a hospitable centre for intellectual 


A Homburg Story. 


i45 


intercourse. Though we knew nothing of 
a synagogue, I was aware of the differing 
religious and sacred traditions of our own, 
and, I must confess, that when I did dwell 
upon them, it was only with pride — nay, 
with a strong dash of dreamy romance. 
Emerson, who was a friend of my father's, 
Channing and the Boston Unitarians and 
rationalists were the intellectual guides to 
our religious convictions ; and the Jewish 
faith I looked upon with pride as the 
foundation of spiritual monotheism for all 
times. Moses was to me the forerunner 
of all these modern theists. 

“ My mother’s family sprang from that 
old group of Newport Jews, most of whom 
have been lost as Jews by intermarriage 
among the old New England families. 
And when at Newport I passed the park 
and monument of Touro whose kin I was, 
and saw the old graveyard of the Jews, I 
would read and recite Longfellow’s poem 
on this Jewish cemetery and would feel 
imbued with the poetic spirit surrounding 
these people, their heroism and martyr- 
dom, against which the picture of the 
10 


146 A Homburg Story . 

Mayflower puritans would fade into colour- 
less commonplace. 

“ My father’s family had been more re- 
cently English, as I told you. But I would 
listen with rapt attention as a child to his 
beautiful account of the life and sufferings 
of his ancestors in Spain and England, and 
I perused and devoured with avidity the 
literature relating to these Spanish Jews. 
The King of the Chasari, converted to 
Judaism in the eighth century, the philoso- 
pher Maimonides, the poet Judah ben 
Halevy, were heroes of mine ; and the 
brilliant and refined life of the great Jews 
of Spain and Portugal was the sphere in 
which I loved to dwell in charmed imagi- 
nation, as much as any nobleman can 
dwell with delight upon the exploits of 
his mediaeval ancestors. Born in Ameri- 
ca, I was especially pleased to run across 
a treatise published a few years ago which 
showed what direct share Jews had in the 
enterprise of Columbus, to the astronomi- 
cal and geographical data for which they 
contributed, and in which several Jews 
participated. 


A Homburg Story. 


147 


“ But the figure I admired most was my 
own ancestor Don Isaac Abrabanel, and I 
loved to read of his life. The picture 
given by the few words in which he de- 
scribes his life before his expulsion from 
Portugal by the Inquisition, was constantly 
in my mind, and I built upon it dreams of 
the past. ‘Peaceably,’ the old man wrote 
of himself, ‘I lived in my father’s house in 
the far-famed Lisbon, and God had show- 
ered upon me many blessings, wealth and 
honour. I had built great edifices and 
vast halls ; my house was a centre for the 
learned and the wise. I was beloved in 
the palace of Alphonso, a mighty and just 
king, under whom the Jews were free and 
enjoyed prosperity. I was closely tied to 
him ; he leant upon me, and, as long as he 
lived, I freely entered the palace. ’ 

“ One of my favourite heroines was Maria 
Nunes, who was sent from Portugal by her 
distinguished mother in the ship of Jacob 
Tirado. An English frigate captured the 
Portuguese vessel. The commander, an 
English duke, was so much attracted by 
Maria, that he offered her marriage and 


148 


A Homburg Story. 


was refused. When the captives were led 
to London the beauty of Maria caused such 
a sensation that Queen Elizabeth was anx- 
ious to make the acquaintance of the girl 
who had refused a duke. She invited her 
to an audience and drove through the 
streets of London with her. It was 
through her influence that the captive 
Marranos were enabled to leave England, 
and she worked for her people when they 
were settled in Holland. 

“ With all these thoughts of the past, I 
still lived wholly and with pure delight in 
the present and the future, and I was spe- 
cially responsive to social pleasures. I 
even think that I was not free from the 
‘social’ ambition to shine and be promi- 
nent in the circles which are widely recog- 
nised as leading the tone, that fills the 
hearts of so many young women, often to 
the exclusion and extinction of all nobler 
aspirations. And my cravings were fully 
satisfied. Dances, parties of all kinds, 
visits to fashionable resorts, and, above 
all, our own beautiful house and home, — 
all these I had, and they gave me oppor- 


A Homburg Story. 149 

tunities of playing a prominent social 
part. 

“ But I was by main force made aware 
of the existence of prejudice, though it did 
not touch my deeper emotional experience 
and sympathy. For it was not directed 
immediately against me and my own peo- 
ple. It only touched the surface of my 
apprehension, without making me really 
suffer myself or suffer in sympathy with 
others. I read of the Anti-Semitic move- 
ments abroad ; but, except for momentary 
bursts of indignation, and a great contempt 
for the country and people where such vul- 
gar folly and ignorance prevailed, no last- 
ing or deeper impressions were made upon 
me. 

“ I cannot say the same for the manner 
in which I occasionally overheard my 
friends, especially my women friends, re- 
fer to other Jewish women during our 
travels, or at some of our favourite fash- 
ionable resorts. These references stigma- 
tised them as something of the nature of 
social outcasts. I began to think it over ; 
a sense of resistance, of indignation at the 


150 A Homburg Story. 

injustice began to grow in me ; and with 
it a prick of conscience whether I ought 
not to associate myself with the ranks of 
these weaker ones with whom I was so in- 
timately connected by ties of history and 
tradition. But the remoteness of these ex- 
periences as regarded myself, the fresh- 
ness of my youthful spirits, and the ful- 
ness of my pleasant and varied life carried 
me over it. Still I began to think of the 
matter, and, at all events, while I was be- 
ginning to lose the absolute lightness 
and naivete of my social bearing, I was pre- 
pared to receive these experiences in the 
very heart of my sensitiveness. 

“And then came this blow here; and 
with it all the intensity and bitterness of 
the feelings, over which a thoughtless and 
youthful temperament had caused me to 
slur. In those few days I lived my whole 
life over again. I reproached myself stern- 
ly with disloyalty to those unfortunate 
ones, by whom, as the better favoured and 
stronger, I ought for years to have stood. 

I realised how much they must have suf- 
fered ; and I vowed that, from that day, I 


A Homburg Story . 15 1 

would stand under their colours and fight 
for them. A great resentment not only 
against the offenders, but against society 
in general, was beginning to fix itself per- 
manently in my heart. 

“ And then you came and by the delicacy 
and generous kindness of your manner, you 
softened my mood ; while, by the clear and 
supreme reasonableness of what you have 
said, you showed me the true proportion of 
life in general and of my own life in par- 
ticular. Last night in bed ‘I stood upon 
the highest point of my life and self ’ and 
saw stretched out before me, as this plain 
lies at our feet, the world of people, things 
and events, and my own little life among 
them, and I see clearly what I ought to 
do — which makes me intensely happy. 

“ I mean to fight for these people with 
the weapons which my feeble hands are 
capable of wielding ; and still I wish to 
struggle against bitterness in my own 
heart, and strive to retain the freshness 
and lightness — and grace, if I have such — 
of pleasant intercourse with the people I 
meet. 


152 A Homburg Story. 

“ The hateful prejudice is chiefly based 
upon ignorance of the past and present life 
of the Jews. I am in a position to know both 
and to make them known to others. I shall 
continue my studies of the non-biblical non- 
theological history of the Jews, and shall 
then strive to make it widely known in the 
beautiful English language which I love 
to wield, however imperfectly. This will 
be some real work for me to do, it will be 
‘ fighting ’ and not 4 quarrelling. ’ As for 
my social life, I wish to forget and to ig- 
nore the fight, to accept and select my 
friends as heretofore, and, above all, to ac- 
cept with ‘ gratitude and gracefulness ’ any 
noble friendship which is nobly offered 
me, such as you, my dear friend, have 
been moved to bring within my reach.” 

There was a touching solemnity in her 
voice as she uttered these last words, and 
still looking straight before her in the dis- 
tance, she extended her hand to him. He 
rose from his seat and grasped her hand. 

“No,” he said passionately, “it is not 
friendship which I offer you, Margaret, — 
it is love, the purest love of a man, the 


A Homburg Story. 153 

purest love of my life. Do not spurn it! 
From the first moment my eyes gazed on 
you, I was full of your image, of your 
whole being, and I can never tear myself 
from you. You are my queen, and I your 
humble slave. I bless you, you sweetest 
woman, in all humility. Your fight shall 
be my fight, your peace and joy shall be 
mine, and I shall always be wholly yours. 
Listen, you sweet girl, let me be sober. 
I am an ordinary man, who has lived an 
ordinary life ; 1 have not much to be proud 
of in my past, but nothing dishonourable 
that I need be ashamed of. I come from 
simple people, my ancestors commonplace 
lairds in the rough and arid hills of Scot- 
land ; I have not the poetry of the great 
traditions of your race and family to beau- 
tify and mellow the music of my soul; but 
let me thrill with it from you, let me feel 
the resonance of great moral purpose and 
struggle which for centuries of steadfast- 
ness and martyrdom has ripened and en- 
nobled your race. Margaret, be mine 
wholly. Can you not love me? Do you 
not care for me a little only?” 


154 


A Homburg Story. 


She sat motionless, her hand resting in 
his, her eyes still fixed before her ; but her 
nostrils and lips quivered as she said 
feebly : 

“ I do and have, more than I wished to.” 

“ Oh, bless you for that, my queen. 
How lovely you are; if you knew it you 
would waste yourself in self-adoration. 
Come and see !” 

And with that he drew her by the hand 
to the silent pool and they knelt down, and 
with heads close together they gazed into 
its limpid depths. 

It had been mysteriously dark on that 
first afternoon. But now the sun touched 
its smooth, clear, unruffled surface, and 
they gazed each upon the image of the 
other reflected from the pure, bright mir- 
ror, and drank themselves drunk with the 
sight of the face they each loved. 

Then he rose, and drew her up close to 
him with gentle strength. She resisted, 
but he whispered : 

“ Margaret, can you not put trust in me?” 
And he kissed her lips, she clinging to him 
in a long embrace. 


A Homburg Story. 


i55 


Then they turned and gazed once more 
upon the lovely scene at their feet. The 
sun had dissipated the clouds before it and 
the haze hovering over the plain. The 
Un lscape was laughing in purest light, 
Homburg lay there like a child smiling 
and resting in the meadows. All was 
gladness. 


X 


Margaret and her sisters left that after- 
noon. They did not wait to be presented 
to the Prince. Campbell and his love 
wrote to each other every day. He then 
joined them in England. 

In six months they were married, and 
are the happiest couple I know. She has 
published some articles, and is now writ- 
ing a book, on the history of the Jews. 
He takes an active interest in her work, as 
she is keenly interested in his. She is a 
great favourite in London society, and a 
charming hostess. There is no house 
where more interesting people are met 
than at the Campbells’. Her manners are 
perfect in their grace and naturalness, — 
especially with the best-bred and really 
superior people. With those not of the 
absolutely best breeding, one may occa- 
sionally notice a certain hesitation and 


A Homburg Story . 


i57 


constraint in her bearing. She is herself 
not drawn to Homburg ; but, knowing that 
it is good for his health, she accompanies 
him there, and likes it when once she is 
there. They invariably make a pilgrim- 
age to the pool in the woods. 


THE END. 



A Homburg Story 


By 

Gordon Seymour 



































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